Articles - News

   A major humanitarian effort in the Tri-state area to assist those affected by Hurricane Tomas is on its way. At a public meeting held in Brooklyn, a broad-based committee was formed with the specific aim of collecting non-perishables and other basic necessities to help those persons who have lost their homes, clothing and most, if not all, of their worldly possessions.

The committee operating under theme:- HOPE FOR ST LUCIA - USA - is made up of a number of St Lucians and friends of St. Lucia living in the New York area.
This coming Saturday, 13th November, 2010,the Committee will undertake a massive food and clothing drive throughout the Tri-State area. All persons wishing to contribute to the effort are asked to donate items such as: Can foods, rice, clothing, candles, bed sheets, sanitary napkins, pampers and towels etc.

Three locations have been identified as drop off points for the collection of these non-perishable items. They are (1) St Lucia Paradise, 1272 Broadway, Brooklyn, New York, between the hours of 1 and 8 pm. Those without transport are asked to contact Fred Actie at 718-795-5480. (2) Marilyn and Kenson William at 457 East 49th Street, Brooklyn, Telephone: 646-288-1069. Drop off time is between the hours of 11- 8pm. (3) Sharon Prudent, Queens at 138-20 224 Street, Laurelton, New York. Telephone: (718) 710-5193. Drop off time between the hours of 11 - 8PM.

The Committee wishes to inform the public that any of the above numbers can be called for drop-offs and/or pickups on any other day.
A fund raising dance will be held at The Lucian Paradise on Saturday, December 4th, 2010 starting at 8:00 pm.

   .Fellow St. Lucians and Friends of St Lucia,
The St. Lucia Toronto Association in its efforts to assist the Hurricane Tomas victims is collaborating with the event organizers of the Night with the Kings with the purpose of hosting Hygiene Drive. At the event we will be collecting hygiene products to donate to victims of Hurricane Tomas in St. Lucia. These hygiene items may include, but are not limited to:

Toothpaste




Antiseptics



Sanitary Napkins




Hand Sanitizers



Toilet Paper




Washing Soap



Diapers (for Adult & Children)




Shampoo



Soap




Disposal Razors



Towels




Deodorant

Tooth Brushes




Combs



**** PLEASE ENSURE THAT ALL DONATED ITEMS ARE UNUSED AND IN THEIR ORIGINAL PACKAGING****

The St. Lucia Toronto Association will also be accepting monetary donations for the Hurricane Fund.

This event will be held on Saturday, 20th November 2010 at the Hungarian Canadian Cultural Centre located at 840 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto M6C 1C1. Doors open at 8:00pm. Showtime10:00pm

This event will feature Live from St Lucia:

2008 Groovy Soca Monarch - Herb Black

2010 Calypso Monarch - De Invader

2010 Caribbean Soca Monarch - Ricky T

The organizers will be donating 50% of the proceeds to the St Lucia Hurricane Relief Fund. The other 50% will go to the St. Lucia Diabetes Association. Tickets are $35.00 and are available by calling (416) 402-4231 or emailing thetalentbank@gmail.com . Attached is a flyer with further details.

For more information on this please check our website www.stluciatoronto.org or by emailing stluciatoronto@gmail.com

Thank you for your continued support.

Interim Committee- St. Lucia Toronto Association





--
Ross Cadasse
416-402-4231

   As egregious as some considered last week’s statement by Trinidad & Tobago prime Kamla Persad-Bissessar on aid to the territories hit by Hurricane Tomas, still it was the local reaction that grabbed my attention. Candidly, it was at once embarrassing and hilarious, and yes, so damn hypocritical. Only a few months ago we were ready to string up our own prime minister for symbolically contributing a measly hundred thousand EC dollars to another country struck by natural disaster, on the basis that we were ourselves too poor to be charitable. Doesn’t it say somewhere that it’s not so much the value of the gift that matters as the feelings that inspired it? Oh, but there we were ready to set out on a suicidal mission—including boycotts!—to make Trinidad & Tobago pay for their prime minister’s perceived faux pas, yes, those who support her stated position as well as those who do not!
Not one of the programmed perennially infuriated callers to Newsspin and Newsmaker Live bothered to consider the T&T prime minister’s somewhat peculiar circumstances, let alone deal realistically with her statement, shocking as indeed it was, if only on first hearing. According to a related Trinidad Express report, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar told reporters at a Trinidad press conference that she had in the immediate aftermath of Tomas received a call for help from her St Vincent and the Grenadines counterpart Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, in relation to which she told the media: “We will have to look at ways in which we would be able to assist. But you would recall my comments earlier this year, when I said there must be some way in which Trinidad & Tobago would also benefit. So if we are giving assistance for housing, for example, and it is one of the areas that we, the prime minister of St Vincent and myself, spoke about . . . then we may use Trinidad & Tobago builders and companies, so that whatever money or assistance is given redounds back in some measure to the people of Trinidad & Tobago.”
Okay, so the statement might easily have been better worded to conceal its political color. Remember that T&T’s opposition parties had severely criticized the Patrick Manning government for assisting other Caribbean countries, even in non-emergency situations. But Manning was not above publicly reminding the more depressed areas of the region of his largesse when it seemed they, including Saint Lucia, were about take advantage of a promising fuel deal with Hugo Chavez.
It is also worth remembering that Ralph Gonsalves is notorious for campaigning at election time in territories not his own and leaving more division in his noisome wake. He once publicly declared Morella Joseph afflicted with “political AIDS,” therefore to be avoided at all cost in favor of Kenny Anthony “the giant of CARICOM.” He was most unflattering, not to say downright disrespectful, of John Compton in the 2006 elections—and by all accounts went out of his way at the time of the last T&T general elections to paint Manning as being several cuts above the opposition, including Kamla Persad-Bissessar. No surprise, therefore, that when she agreed to help him build homes for hurricane-ravaged Vincentians she tweaked his political nose while at the same time leaving herself wiggle room, just in case some in Trinidad remembered her election criticism of Manning’s aid policy. Indeed, it is worth underscoring yet again the dangers inherent in open involvement in the politics of another country. When a local prime minister campaigned in St Vincent for Ralph Gonsalves and ended up referring to one of his opponents as belonging to a breed of rodent, he most certainly embarrassed Saint Lucians who supported neither the Labour party nor the idea of interference in the politics of another territory. I could offer several reasons why the practice does little for Caribbean unity!
I have no doubt some seasonal idealists will say there is no room for politics when it comes to humanitarian aid. I dare to say that aid is aid is aid, just as necessity is necessity, whether or not dire. Moreover, in much the same way that regardless of appearance there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so there’s no such thing as free assistance. In any event, Kamla Persad-Bissessar showed the stuff she is made of when she set aside her Trinidad-first policy and braved a visit to angry Saint, perchance to hear directly from our government how she might assist us.
Of course, no sooner had she and her large entourage of reporters landed at Vigie than the Unidentified Foolish Objectors moved into high gear. Now it seemed the T&T prime minister was no longer their primary target. Caller after caller talked nonsense about how our prime minister had let us down by permitting his Trinidad counterpart to visit our battered island. Some recommended that she be assigned a low-ranking local official, just to let her know what our government thought of her. King was again described as weak and spineless for paying the visiting prime minister the usual courtesies. It did not help when word leaked out that the Saint Lucian prime minister’s press secretary took back his invitation to the press, on the ground that they might’ve asked questions concerning the Trini prime minister’s highly publicized controversial statement a day or so earlier. Doubtless, we’ll be hearing more of that later.
In any event Prime Minister King’s own statement was sobering. He acknowledged his guest’s comments as “a slip of the tongue” and concentrated instead on the generosity inherent in her visit. Said Mr. King: “The prime minister probably needs some time to settle down in terms of how she promotes her own domestic agenda against the regional agenda. Sometimes it can be difficult when you try to promote your domestic agenda by reaching out to your own people but understanding that you also have a regional role to play. And if you are not careful, in many instances as prime minister we all can make these mistakes by overplaying our domestic responsibilities and domestic commitments against the regional responsibility and regional commitments.”
He seemed also to be saying that when his T&T counterpart agreed to help St Vincent she was mindful of her election pledge to be different from Patrick Manning—and may have misspoken. Besides, he observed, there are always strings attached to aid, whether or not obvious. In the meantime, said King, the T&T prime minister was giving Saint Lucia much needed assistance.
Evidently the opposition party had nothing to say on the Kamla Persad-Bissessar issue. Presumably the Labour Party newspaper spoke for it. But now, even as I write, Kenny Anthony is on Andre Paul’s morning show, endorsing my often- repeated prayer that “we cannot continue like this, we must invest in the changing of the politics of this country,” even as he stubbornly remains the same. Once again the opposition leader insisted he did nothing wrong where Rochamel was concerned, that “no corruption” was uncovered anyway. If only the somewhat accommodating host on the occasion had bothered to consult his lexicon, he might’ve discovered “corruption” is not confined only to stealing public funds for personal use or to receiving undeserved Tuxedo-type concessions. Had Andre looked up the word, he would’ve confronted the following definition for corruption: “Marked by immorality and perversion.” Also “depraved, venal, dishonest . . .” Andre may then have formed his own educated opinion as to the paying from the Consolidated Fund for guarantees not approved by parliament. Consider this from the Ramsahoye Commission’s report: “The net amount paid by the government of Saint Lucia towards the debt of Frenwell Limited was completely lost to the government and people of Saint Lucia . . . We did not discern any attempt to protect the government and people of Saint Lucia from this loss . . . There was no evidence that high level public servants who were engaged in the offices of Dr Kenny Anthony, the prime minister and minister of finance, were involved in the decision-making process concerning this transaction. All of the relevant documents which supported the liability of the government and people of Saint Lucia to pay monies in connection with the resort were signed by the prime minister . . . We consider that the loss which the government and people of Saint Lucia suffered in this matter was the result of maladministration . . .”
Maladminister is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “to administer or manage inefficiently or dishonestly.” Then there is the definition by the former British MP Richard Crossman: “Bias, neglect, inattention, delay, incompetence, ineptitude, perversity, turpitude”—in any case hardly the best credentials for a repeat seeker of the highest office in the land!
During his stint on Andre’s show, the opposition leader acknowledged he had been in Miami on urgent personal business when Tomas struck but that he was in touch with his Vieux Fort constituents, in the circumstances no small feat. He returned home last Wednesday and shortly afterward was heard complaining to Timothy Poleon by phone that his constituents were having a particularly rough time and that he had reason to “suspect they feel that not much by way of assistance is going to reach them, so they are taking things in hand and I am certainly there to provide any possible support.”
In Soufriere, he said, “emotions are running high, there are lots of complaints about water. Water is being distributed and there is talk of political discrimination and so on. But it is too early to make an assessment of any of those things. You hear the individual testimonies of persons but I will have to do a thorough analysis. But there is a lot of emotion, a lot of anxiety at this time.”
On Andre’s show he repeated his complaint about water but with a slight twist. “Water was sent to Vieux Fort and there was an intervention and the water went elsewhere.” But rather than taking to the airwaves and possibly making a situation worse, as he had done in Soufriere where emotions were “running high,” where there was “a lot of anxiety,” he “spoke with the authorities and fixed things.” Was Dr Anthony totally unaware of the fact that most of the distributors of aid in the communities he referred to are volunteers, young people determined to improve their public image, hard-working personnel from NEMO, the Red Cross and other charity organizations? Imagine how they must feel following the Labour Party leader’s unconfirmed public complaints!
In answer to a question from Andre Paul, Anthony said: “Crisis tests leadership; crisis is an important test of leadership.” Would a responsible leader have risked further chaos by encouraging hurricane victims in Soufriere and Vieux Fort to believe assistance depended on which party they supported? To think that just a couple days earlier, while making a call from Miami, Anthony appealed to Saint Lucians to put politics aside following what he described on Andre’s show as “the most calamitous hurricane to hit us.”

   A major humanitarian effort in the Tri-state area to assist those affected by Hurricane Tomas is on its way. At a public meeting held in Brooklyn, a broad-based committee was formed with the specific aim of collecting non-perishables and other basic necessities to help those persons who have lost their homes, clothing and most, if not all, of their worldly possessions.

   FROM BERNARD FANIS, P.A.C.E. (Professionals in Action for Creative Enterprise):

Guys, hope the damage from Hurricane Tomas was not too severe on you, the family and your creative projects or enterprise. It could have been worse if there were stronger winds, yet still the damage is extensive.



But for us in the Creative Sector, this has been a painful year. Now Sabinus ‘Sabby’ Thomas of Livity Arts Studio just outside Soufriere is no more. There is little hope now that he will be found alive. His wife is also missing, and we understand a trainee/worker and possibly another child.



Keep Sabby and his family in your prayers. You could not have asked for a more committed artisan. He enjoyed what he did, he was passionate, and he made a success out of it!



He was highly respected at home and well loved regionally and his work admired internationally by those who came and purchased his work.



Still holding out hope.

PACE