Articles - News

   By the middle of 1953 when he was satisfied that I had passed the required test to enter St. Mary’s College in January 1954, arrangements were made for suitable accommodation in Castries. I first stayed with a family at Leslie Land and by the second term (April 1954) my dad had moved his entire family to lower Rock Hall Road into a house owned by one of my mom’s sisters. By early teens I had formed a sufficiently strong bond and had made such strides in wind-ball (softball) cricket as to merit a selection on the Marchand team which played against Conway and Hospital Road boys, on Sundays. Back then, underarm (not woule-la-bar) cricket was a serious affair and although monies were won and lost by their results it was for bragging rights that they gained popularity. Matches were played on a round robin basis with each team visiting the other at least twice during the cricket season - January to May each year.
I became aware of the existence of certain young men from those three communities who held grudges the origins of which eluded me. Some of the anger may have been the result of bets placed and lost on cricket matches. Such differences grew to a point where one had to be careful who one associated with if one were to venture into each others ‘territory’. The protection of ‘turf’ became a big deal. Venturing into Conway during the day was a challenge to many young men growing up in the Marchand area. I recall being sent to collect a lady’s hat which an aunt had left at a place in Conway to be adjusted and embellished with flowers. Running such an errand was not particularly pleasing. In addition to the filth and very poor housing I did not wish to be recognized by some bully as a ‘Marchand-boy’. Happily, the address I needed was just two or three doors away from a popular rum shop which was then owned and operated by one Emmanuel and just a short hop from where the road ended.
The differences between these three youth groups (gangs) in Castries had by the late fifties become so intense that the news of the ambush and beating of a fellow nick named ‘Boo-boon’ from Conway was topical for several months. Apparently his adversaries had hidden in the burnt out shell of the Castries library - before its reconstruction following the 1948 fire - and had worked the cured and stretched remains of a bull’s penis - about four feet in length and a favourite weapon in those days - all over the poor fellow. As the bull’s cured remains reached Boo Boon’s back, he made off at top speed all the while bawling ‘Oh gord, Oh gord, they lash me in ‘tweat’ (spite).
Several months after that incident those who retold it claimed that poor ‘ boo-boon’ was still running away from his terrible scourging, at the hands of his attackers. Such senseless savagery was well-known but little documented between youths of different backgrounds. No one could say for certain the true origins or the nature of these youth gangs. An offender’s only ‘crime’ back then was belonging to another section of the poverty which surrounded Castries on each side except where its ‘safe’ harbour lay.
Over the years, and in the name of progress the small playing field at Hospital Road was developed into a road and a parking place for mini buses. The same fate has befallen the small green space between the St. Lucia Marketing Board and the new residential buildings where the boys from Conway played cricket in the fifties and sixties. Meanwhile, only the Marchand grounds remained; even this once open space in which at least five cricket matches would be in progress on any given day during the cricket season, is now walled-up (since the seventies) thereby denying entry to those youngsters who wish a game of cricket on this once hallowed burial ground and football Mecca.

Whatever came of the three groups (the gangs) of Castries - is any body’s guess. Sometimes I wonder wether there is any relationship between the present youngsters who are now using deadly force against each other and the gangs which existed fifty and sixty years ago in Castries. One thing is very clear. The gangs of Castries did not just fall from the skies last night or last year or even in the last decade. Neither are their members manufacturers of cocaine nor guns.
Another major difference between then and now is the obvious politicization of the modern day bad boy. In times past politicians (and businessmen) would hurry to distance themselves from anything or anyone remotely unlawful or socially unacceptable. To hear some people speak today one would think that the gangs and their leaders run things - from white to blue -color workers. No one in authority, it appears, has the guts to ask the important questions. Worst of all, there is no new entrant into politics who dares to speak out against the most debilitating social disease on this island - lawlessness, gangs, crime and violence - and those with influence behind it all.

Why me Lord?
Two days after being told for the umpteenth time by someone who has had a deep and genuine connection with the grand old party (SLP) that, I should speak out on radio and television about crime in Saint Lucia I found myself in conversation with a young man who had travelled on the same flight as I had to Barbados. This time the conversation touched more directly on crime in Saint Lucia. He confided that he had overheard an exchange at a bar in Castries in which two young men were bragging about a particular crime they had committed and the pay off of a certain policeman who facilitated their escape. That passenger added that since ‘you and brother George nobody has tried to mobilize the country and point to a more positive future’.
I was also informed that a certain young man who had committed a serious crime had been assisted in leaving the island for another further north; this time by parents, police and lawyers all acting in concert.
I almost asked why me Lord, when I recalled that two or three months earlier I was assured that the reason the white British police were forced out of Saint Lucia by a ‘gang’ of police had nothing to do with politics. No, it was not politics; I was assured. They just used politics like every other criminal does. The British police had discovered concrete evidence leading to the murderer of the Permanent Secretary, but you remember her! If the country’s new Attorney General wants to make a difference, he should question the last six British policemen who were forced out of the island by certain vagabonds within the police service. More than that he should open up every unsolved murder case and seek help in getting the perpetrators captured, tried and sentenced. Unlike some people I know, the Lord has a bad habit of not answering when I call. Perhaps He thinks he has empowered me sufficiently to write as I see fit and let others run their mouths if they so choose. I was reminded, that I ought not to ask why me Lord, in tough times, if I don’t ask the same question in happier moments. I therefore ask: Why me Lord?

   For the first time ever, inmates at the Bordelais Correctional Facility are among the successful candidates who wrote the January CXC/CSEC examinations. The Registrar of Examinations at the Ministry of Education says although the results of the standardized test are - analysis of the overall performance has not been conducted. However - Education Officials say they are very impressed with the inmates who performed exceptionally well at the CXC level with grade one and two

passes. Out of the 65 inmates enrolled in the education program at the Bordelais prison seven received instruction in preparation for the CXC examination. However, after two years of remedial work 6 of the inmates qualified to take the test. Alexander says the participation of the inmates at the CXC examination is unprecedented in the history of the island’s education system. The inmates who wrote the CXC examinations are between the ages of 20 and 35. January CXC results are available at the Ministry of Education in the North and the Vieux Fort Sub-Office.

   Louisy, Sir Allan (Fitzgerald Laurent) (b. Sept. 5, 1916, Laborie village, Saint Lucia), prime minister of Saint Lucia (1979-81). He served as registrar of the Supreme Court and additional magistrate (1946-50), senior magistrate in Antigua (1951-54), and crown attorney and legal draftsman in Montserrat (1954-55) and then in Dominica (1956-58). His career then took him to Jamaica, where he was resident magistrate, then registrar of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal until 1964, when he took up a post on the bench of the Associated States Appeal Court.



His political career began in October 1973 (shortly after he retired as a judge of the Appeal Court) with the then opposition St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP). The party was split over the question of leadership at the time, and Louisy came on the scene as a mediator. He negotiated the admission of new blood into the party and brought to it a measure of respectability that it had not known for many years. In the elections of May 1974, he made his first attempt at a House of Assembly seat, running in his home village of Laborie. The SLP lost by seven seats to ten for the United Workers Party (UWP), but Louisy won his contest by a margin of over 1,000 votes and was selected by the party as leader of the opposition in the new Parliament. Two years later the SLP's leadership problem, which had remained unresolved, was settled at a national party convention, and Louisy emerged triumphant in a three-way contest. On July 2, 1979, he became prime minister following the resounding defeat, in the first post-independence election, of the UWP, which had held power for 16 years under the leadership of John Compton. Louisy resigned as prime minister in 1981, but was appointed a minister without portfolio and later attorney general. He did not seek reelection in 1982 and retired from the political arena soon thereafter. He was knighted in 2005.

   The British Home Office announced on Wednesday afternoon that, after a six month review, it will not be imposing visa restrictions on travellers from Dominica and St Lucia.

A BBC Caribbean report stated that both countries were subjected to a visa waiver test, which assessed the risk their nationals pose to the United Kingdom in terms of illegal immigration, crime and security.

The previous Labour administration wrote to the governments of Dominica and St Lucia just over a year ago saying that nationals had "been identified as posing a sufficiently high risk as to warrant, in principle, the introduction of a visa requirement” for all their visitors to the UK.

   Castries Central MP Richard Frederick, the man who launched the ‘Peace and Love’ campaign was a big part of the reason Ronald Sylvester more notoriously known as “Bage” made a surprise radio appearance in February 2010.
Much like this year, in 2010, the homicide rate on island spiked in the early part of the year. By the end of January five people were dead. Richard Frederick indicated on the “Can I Help You” Radio 100 program he was hopeful the killing spree would stop. “Bage”, who was then seen as one of the men at the center of the conflict, agreed to the radio interview in the name of peace.
Thirty-six-year-old Ronald Sylvester had been identified as a suspect in homicides and other incidents, including a shooting on June, 15, 2009 on Venus Road, Anse La Raye that claimed the life of 56-year-old Ramchan Adjodha. Adjodha had been at home along with five other persons when several shots were fired at the house. As a result, all the occupants were injured and taken to the Victoria Hospital. Sylvester was one of five men who were taken into custody after the incident, but released due to lack of evidence.
On Monday, February 28, 2011 at about 4:30pm, police conducted an operation, which also involved a traffic check in the vicinity of Entrepot, Bagatelle/ Marchand area in Castries.
According to police reports, during the exercise, a black car driven by 36-year-old Ronald Sylvester also known as Reginald Jean aka “Bage” of Bagatelle, approached the police check point but failed to stop. He was shot in the process and police recovered a loaded firearm from the car.
Sylvester was taken to the Victoria Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The 36-year-old’s father appeared on the HTS evening news on Monday night and said he’d heard the gunshots that claimed his son’s life.
“I’ll tell you something, no matter who your child is. . . I’m not saying my son was good, but he was good to me. I was just trying to change his life around,” he said. “Just yesterday we were together. I dropped him by his home. I heard the gunshots from on top of the hill. To hear your son die, it’s a very hard thing. If the police had any warrant against him, up to yesterday I drove by the police station, dropped him by his home. He lives a few hundred yards from the police station, why you can’t get him? He’s somebody, he’s not in hiding. He’s up all about the place. A couple yards from the police station why can’t you arrest him?”
When the STAR met with “Bage” in 2010 he’d been nursing a gunshot wound to the arm. He was shot on January 25, 2010 outside a Rodney Bay bar and indicated it was not the first time.
“Forgiveness belongs to the Lord, so I can’t forgive anybody because I will not forget,” he said live on radio. “But at the end of the day I will let the law take its course and I don’t want nobody to feel that because I’m on air speaking, that I’m a coward.
On the show in 2010, Richard Frederick posed the question: “I have no doubt in my mind that you have placed a mask and probably fired a shot . . . That is what I believe. Am I right in believing so?”
Bage quickly dismissed the question: “Well, it’s your belief. A belief is a doubt anyway.”
Phones in the studio were ringing off the hook that day, from people who wanted to show their support for Bage, if he truly meant to change his life for the better, and others who didn’t quite believe that he would.
“I would like to say bravo to Bage for taking the initiative. I find it’s a very big step he took, but how will he be protected?” one caller asked. “What method of justice, what can be assured that he in turn will be protected so he can keep his word? It’s a matter of saying one thing; he’s on the good side, but what about the others on the ‘bad side’ who want revenge?”
Richard Frederick promised he would not stop there and would do whatever was necessary to ensure “it goes beyond the boundaries.”
“I desire to ensure persons allegedly involved that all of us have our role to play,” the minister said.
When asked by talk show host Andre Paul whether he’d ever taken revenge over any particular thing in his life, and if it left him feeling justified, Bage responded: “Revenge, I think everyone has taken revenge for something. As long as you’re not the one that starts it off, if they do to you, you’ll always feel satisfied of what you’ve done. It doesn’t make a difference, as long as you satisfy yourself. Sometimes you do tend to say things to satisfy yourself, and then later on, think . . . that’s where the saying he who laughs last laughs the best come from.
“I’d stay there and say my little prayer and say, you know, Lord forgive me for what I’ve done wrong, to those I have done wrong, and forgive those who have done me wrong. Everybody has a conscience.”
Bage’s final words on last year’s radio show were: “Peace, and words of wisdom to try and heal the streets.”
Meanwhile, Human Rights attorney Martinus Francois is calling for a swift and intensive investigation for the fifth police killing for the year. Francois said on the RCI midday news yesterday that police must be held accountable to the law like any ordinary citizen and should not be allowed to get away with murder.
“If the police shoot somebody and they cannot justify it, it is murder,” he said. “There is no other way to describe it, it is murder. The police always get away with murder, they’re never brought to [justice], this is like a recurring decimal in this country, nothing happens but this must stop.”
Ronald Sylvester’s death brings the homicide rate to 17 for this year.