Articles - News

   Prime minister and minister of finance Stephenson King yesterday announced to his Cabinet of Ministers his bold decision to pump some $300 million into the local economy, as an incentive to the private sector to hire out-of-STEP Saint Lucians.
During an exclusive interview with this writer following his Cabinet meeting, the prime minister revealed he had taken a long, hard look at the consequences of the world-wide recession and decided that what Saint Lucians needed most at this particular time were jobs, jobs and more jobs.
The national economy was not all that important, right now, he said. From here on he will concentrate on opportunities for the poor to become millionaires.
It had taken him quite some time to arrive at that almost epiphanical conclusion, said the prime minister. So as to avoid the wall-to-wall election-time beggars with their jumbie sob stories, he had toured the country disguised in a body corset that rendered him as bodylicious as Claudius Francis.
“It was only after several night-and-day visits to William Peter and George Charles boulevards, Wilton’s Yard, the Vieux Fort mangue, Choiseul, and Tomas-ravaged Soufriere that the idea came to me,” the prime minister revealed. “You know, like an epiphany. If their reason for not hiring the good citizens I saw just liming around in clouds of smoke was that the business sector can hardly pay its own bills, then, no big thing, I will take care of that.”
He still is not yet quite certain which companies are deserving of his special stimulation, or how much each business house stands to receive.
“That’ll depend on the number of workers they employ,” he said. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
“Hey,” I said, “isn’t that a Karl Marx notion? Aren’t you concerned about being labeled a communist?”
“Not at all,” the prime minister replied. “When your belly is grumbling for lack of attention your first thought is to fill it. Hungry bellies aren’t interested in philosophy. I speak from personal experience.”
I wondered whether he had conducted private-sector surveys, perchance to discover the businesses most deserving of financial stimulation. He planned to do just that, the prime minister said. But already there was one organization that stood out.
“Let’s face it,” he said, “the public service employs nearly three-quarter of our work force. So right there you can see what I mean by ‘each according to his need.’”
“But what about the ability part?” I prodded.
“Well, again the public service comes to mind,” said the prime minister. “What company in Saint Lucia boasts more doctorates, Bachelor degrees and so on? The nation’s best brains sweat in the public service inventing solutions to our several problems. Then you have the tourism industry, by which I refer to the hotels, guest houses, taxi drivers etcetera, etcetera.”
“What about the banana industry? It employs a whole lot of people.”
The prime minister smiled his least scrutable smile: “You know who killed the banana industry, right? Most of the farmers were advised to invest what little savings they had in tour buses and used luxury cars imported from Miami, most of them under-invoiced. Which of course accounts for a lot of the complaints from tourists who say their drivers treat them as if they were cargo. You know, like they were transporting banana and sacks of mango and dasheen to the market.”
“So does that mean our banana farmers will have to limp along with no stimulation whatsoever?”
“Well, not exactly,” the prime minister promised. “But at your age you would know resurrecting the dead takes a lot more stimulation than most people imagine it does. I was thinking just the other day, while watching the National Geographic channel, that if only we could find a buyer for our seabed . . . But then again, we no longer own our sea bed, do we?”
I ducked the insinuation. “So are you saying there’s no way to prevent more farmers from going bananas!”
The prime minister smiled. “Right. And you know who killed bananas!”
My final question: “With the mother of all recessions showing no signs of letting up any time soon, how do you propose to lay your hands on $300 million?” Again the prime minister’s smile spoke volumes: “Now, that’s the million-dollar question?”
“Don’t you mean $300 million?” I asked. “Meme bête,” he chuckled. “Meme pwel!”
And I said: “In any language, $300 million is a King’s ransom!”
“Not to mention a whole lot more than we got from Jack Grynberg!” said King.

   The revocation of Richard Frederick’s diplomatic and visitor visas by the State Department of the United States of America continues to garner feedback with the Leader of the National Development Movement (NDM) warning that the Government of Prime Minister Stephenson King could face more problems regarding Frederick.
Meanwhile both the NDM and the Labour Party are calling on Prime Minister King to show a degree of pride and moral courage and remove Frederick from his party’s bandwagon as a candidate for the upcoming general elections.
d’Auvergne put Prime Minister King on the alert when at a press conference Thursday to launch three more of his party’s candidates for the upcoming general elections, he said that King should prepare for an extradition request from the United States.
“The United Workers Party political leader must for once think of the image of this country and he must think of the implications for this country of his actions. I am saying to him that it is time that he shows some moral courage and does what is right for the country, and I will say to him too he must also be prepared for an extradition request because I am sure it is coming,” d`Auvergne said.
d’Auvergne who this year has decided to re-activate his NDM to participate in the forthcoming general elections has been earnestly campaigning. So far he has seven candidates including himself and promises to introduce more next week.
He says that the NDM will field candidates in 14 constituencies except Vieux Fort South, Vieux Fort North and Laborie.
The man who was once the Economic and Planning Minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Stephenson King and a once powerhouse in the public service, has a problem with the United Workers Party’s endorsement of Richard Frederick, given the revocation of his visas by the American Government, to contest the Castries Central seat on a United Workers Party ticket.
This endorsement of Frederick was enforced last Sunday at the UWP’s launch of Andy Daniel as the party’s candidate for Dennery North.




It was at that rally Prime Minister King told the party faithful that a United States visa was not needed to become a parliamentarian.
The statement elicited remarks from both the NDM and the SLP with the NDM describing this as “disturbing”.
“The UWP political leader’s apparent endorsement of Richard Frederick as a candidate for the UWP for Castries central was one of the most disturbing things about that rally. I know it disturbed a lot of people in the country, I know it disturbed a lot of people in the UWP and candidates on the platform. The political leader even made reference to the Constitution to try to justify that apparent endorsement of Richard Frederick. But I am saying to the UWP political leader that it is time for him for once to do what is best for the country,” d’Auvergne said.
“The UWP political leader for once must think of the image of this country and he must think of the implication for this country of his actions as leader of this country. It is time that he shows some moral courage, does what is right for the country,” d’Auvergne said.
Dr. Ubaldus Raymond, the man who will be contesting the Castries North seat against Prime Minister King described the Prime Minister’s statement at Sunday’s rally as “irresponsible rhetoric”.
“As declared on the US State Department website, revocation of a diplomatic visa is considered by America itself to be an action it does not take lightly. No one ever loses their diplomatic visa for a good reason therefore something has to be wrong somewhere,” Dr. Raymond said.
The man who wants to unseat Prime Minister King says he is not comfortable with Richard Frederick’s reputation tainting his own and that of the people of the country and of the country itself.
Meanwhile the three NDM hopefuls who were introduced to the media Thursday are Choix Melchoir, 36. He will carry the NDM banner in the Vieux Fort South Constituency.
Herman Philip, 37 will be the NDM candidate for Gros Islet and Nadge Augustin, 25 who will do battle in Castries Southeast.

   One hundred and twenty students graduated from Monroe College’s St Lucia Campus on Sunday October 9 after completing their studies in previous semesters. The fourth commencement ceremony was held at Gaiety in Gros Islet from 2:30pm.
St Lucia Campus Senior Vice President, Dr Alex Ephrem delivered a brief message from Monroe President Stephen Jerome. Jerome wrote, “For the past few years, you have been active and respected members of Monroe’s family of over 7000 students from over 25 different countries. Today you join the family of 3300 students who have successfully earned and been awarded their degrees during the year 2011. From this day forward you will be members of the much larger family of alumni which includes the tens of thousand of men and women who have graduated from Monroe College over the past 78 years. We are immensely proud of what you have accomplished. You are well prepared and attained a sense of personal confidence rooted in academic competence that will sustain you for the future. Everyone at the college joins me in wishing you happiness, peace, and success in your future endeavors. Congratulations to all!”
Ephrem then moved into his address which encouraged the graduants to explore their potential and take the world by storm. “Within the next couple of months we’ll be entering 2012, a year that countless movies and TV specials purport to be the time of the end of the world apocalypse. However, contrary to these entertaining, but somewhat ridiculous predictions, I see the upcoming times, as is the case with your graduation today, as a new and bright beginning.”
He pronounced, “Today you are celebrating your new entrance into a world which, although retaining many of its difficulties, you will be armed with a vast array of well and hard earned skills, a much broadened set of abilities, and credentials that set you apart from and above any obstacle that may appear. In whatever movies may be made of the future years, you will be the superheros!”
He asked the graduating class to take time to reflect on their lives-their trials and victories- and said, “You should approach everything in front of you with a solid self-confidence and belief in yourself. Know that there are no more obstacles, just opportunities to succeed and demonstrate your talents. There are no more barriers, but opportunities to use your newly gained skills to build doorways for yourself than those that will follow you. Be very proud of what you have earned and know that it is only the beginning of those things you will achieve from this point on.”
Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gonsalves, was the commencement speaker. He was charged to speak on the theme: Small Nations, Big Ideas: The Challenges of providing access to higher education for all Caribbean citizens.
Gonsalves began by extending congratulatory remarks to the graduating class, ensuring he implored them to make a contribution to their country. Gonsalves’ speech provided an overlay of the development and progress of higher education in the Caribbean from the establishment of the University College of the West Indies to the present day.
He lamented that there was a relatively “small number of persons enrolled in tertiary education,” just over 50,000, in a region with a population of five million.
“The UWI-centered approach has left our region woefully behind, Latin America, for example, in providing access to tertiary level education. Fortunately, there has been a growth spurt of higher education offerings but universities and colleges outside of UWI. It is remarkable that in an earlier anything outside the UWI system, in our region was considered heresay,” Gonsalves remarked.
Gonsalves expressed an interest in partnering with Monroe College through its Tourism and Hospitality Training Institute (THTI).
Earlier, Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet, who spoke ahead of Dr Gonsalves mentioned the institute as providing an avenue to international opportunities for unemployed young St Lucians.
The single largest employer of Vincentians is the Royal Caribbean cruise lines, he noted: “So when the issue of training comes up it touches me, not only because of the social impact of an education but clearly but clearly it makes good sense from an economic standpoint and we would really like to partner with you in this regard.”

   Leader of the National Development Movement (NDM) says his party will run a peoples’ campaign since it does not have the type of money to run the type of campaign both the United Workers Party and the Saint Lucia Labour Party are presently running.
Although he did not mention it Ausbert d’Auvergne’s remark touched on campaign financing, something which no one party has yet to discuss.
Election campaigns for public office are expensive. Candidates need funding for all sorts of things including travelling, to maintain support staff, advertising, public appearances like the holding of public meetings in their constituencies, and a host of other things.
Unless they are independently wealthy or have foreign governments handing them tons of cash, most candidates must finance their campaigns with contributions from individuals, businesses and other organizations.
While in other countries of the world limits have been set on campaign contributions and countries have passed laws requiring political parties and candidates to disclose the contributions coming their way and have imposed record-keeping requirements for candidates seeking elective office, this is not the case in Saint Lucia.
With those seeking political office not called on to disclose who gives them money for their campaigns and how much money they have or have collected for their campaigns it is safe to say that persons, businesses and organizations can influence governments, ministers and other members of parliament to work in their favour for the campaign handouts given.



This could cause erosion in the confidence of the public regarding their political leaders, and the government which in turn would be detrimental to the entire country.
None of the five political leaders who have publicly stated their intention to field candidates in the forthcoming general elections have spoken out against the influence that could be brought to bear on unchecked campaign financing.
No one, except the leader of the National Development Movement (NDM) seems prepared to discuss how and where they will get the monies they all need to run their campaigns.
d’Auvergne Thursday told reporter that his party is nowhere near the league of the United Workers Party or the Saint Lucia labour Party in terms of resources, regarding election campaigns, however the NDM would be running a peoples’ campaign, a strategic campaign.
“We expect to get our funding from the people of St. Lucia from well wishers, both locally and internationally and that is the basis from which we are operating. Our campaign is calibrated to that level because we know we cannot compete with an incumbent government, which has foreign powers giving it all sorts of monies to do all sorts of things. We will operate a modest campaign and we will utilize the support that is given to us by our friends and our well wishers both locally and internationally,” d’Auvergne said.

   Journalism can never be altogether pure, wrote Truman Capote in his preface to The Dogs Bark, “nor can the camera, for after all art is not distilled water: personal perceptions, prejudices, one’s sense of selectivity pollute the purity of germless truth.” Still, one should endeavor to be as factual as is humanly possible. Alas, the more watertight a truth, the more unacceptable it is to those who would in their own selfish interests perpetuate obvious myths.
Lawyers and politicians head the list. As I’ve often reminded readers of my columns, lawyers and politicians are interested in truth—but only when it serves their cause. Imagine then, the panic at election time when a lawyer-politician is faced with a set of inconvenient facts. I experienced yet again the phenomenal fall-out, after I had placed under the microscope during the first episode of Sunday TALK this election season’s five party leaders (yes, five!), all considered “lesser evils” by their respective blinkered apostles, at least one of the leaders referring to himself as “leadership you can trust”—never mind their disturbing common morphology!
As much as I had anticipated the reaction last Sunday, still I was taken aback by the mindless retorts of their stubbornly defensive aiders and abettors (anonymity emboldens even rodents, don’t you know!), all of them absolutely disconnected from what I had said during the earlier part of the show. And boy, did I say a mouthful about the quality of this year’s election candidates!
There was the former, well, better to let it go at that. The peculiarly talented party leader has had so many former lives—from controversial public service head honcho to controversial car salesman—that it would be difficult to list them all here. Let it suffice just to identify him as the leader of the resurrected NDM, which in some quarters was once understood to stand for Nine Dead Men and still may, for all I know. I refer to the singular Ausbert d’Auvergne and his National Development Movement.
Then there was Kenny Anthony, whose public service history, sadly, now too closely resembles that of the previously mentioned former permanent secretary—a principal player in the famous “I was duped” UN Scandal Inquiry. And Peter Alexander, whose personal claim to fame (apart from yeoman service as Kenny Anthony’s full-time distorted echo) is based on his somehow having managed to convince most of the media, and quite possibly himself, that there is more to ONE than one.
Then there’s the New York-based Therold Prudent, who in 1997 had famously fed Julian Hunte’s battered carcass to Kenny Anthony’s dogs of war.
Last but hardly least was the prime minister himself, Stephenson King. At the end of my discourse on what their candidacies said about the rest of us, I dismissed the queer quintet en-masse as “the sorry consequence of our complacency over the years and our stubborn refusal to demand quality candidates at election time.”
Not unexpectedly, the more determined resistance came from the seasoned Labour Party’s more experienced, better-trained—and way more desperate!—specially assigned faceless dirty dozen, who proudly boasted that their collective mind was irrevocably made up and permanently closed to new considerations. Despite my irrefutable pronouncements, they fully intended, like Tammy Wynette, to stand by their man. It didn’t stop there. Over and over the UFOs sought verbally to shoot the singer who had earlier delivered the well known Songs of Ramsahoye, Frenwell and Grynberg!
An unforgettable caller refused to hang up until he had declared me a UWP hack for the millionth time. Another accused me of seeking to keep uncommitted young voters away from the polling booths. When I invited a fiesty female to substantiate her charge that the prime minister had lied several times to Saint Lucians, she echoed one of the more worn out yarns from her party’s election repertoire: “King say
Hess woulda build a oil refinery here and Hess
say da eh true!” I dutifully reminded her that none of our leaders had ever had a close relationship with the whole truth and nothing but the truth, at which point she hung up.
Meanwhile, four of the five wannabe prime ministers have been spinning their unchallenged tales on television and on the radio, boldly offering their failsafe solutions to the world recession and its consequences on a region that at the best of times cannot properly feed its citizens, let alone offer them proper education, security, regular employment opportunities and adequate health care.
Kenny Anthony promises to find and make available to the barely breathing private sector $100 million, as an incentive to find work for thousands of unemployable citizens, as well as those rendered unemployed by the unavoidable recession.
(A recent HTS survey indicates that 84 percent of those polled consider Anthony’s $100
million panacea just another of his mindless election promises!)
Ever the used-car salesman, d’Auvergne is still seeking buyers for his “quadrant” cure-all that for undisclosed reasons was passed up by both Sir John and his immediate successor—who evidently sought to correct the old man’s mistake and fired d’Auvergne.
Meanwhile, like the hero of Paul Robeson’s Ol’ Man River who didn’t plant taters, didn’t plant cotton, and didn’t say nuthin’ but had to know sumpin,’ the Heavy Roller just keeps on rollin’ along!