Peter Lansiquot, February 23, 2024
During my time in a certain government ministry, there was a member of staff whose desk used to be littered with numerous items of correspondence. That desk was like a large garbage bin of letters, Memos, books, encyclopedias, a real hodge-podge of reading materials. Yet, that member of staff was well known to be absolutely the least productive, and one of the dumber members of staff in the ministry!
Member of Parliament, Allen Chastanet, reminds me of that staff member. Each time Allen enters the Parliament Chamber, he carries with him a huge bunch of documents. How impressive, right? That libewa of documents should suggest that the Member for Micoud South has been reading, and reading voraciously, right? Alas, it’s all showmanship. Take some time, dear readers, to get better acquainted with that kind of mindset, that kind of bluff and fluff, by reading “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”.
It is my very firm conviction that the Member of Parliament for Micoud South, Mr. Allen Chastanet, is deliberately “bobbing and weaving” in the Parliament, but with very little skill, not fooling anybody.
Allen deliberately loses his turn at the wicket, so that he will not have to bat on the substantial business of the House, then pretends to be angry, claiming that the Members of the governing side do not want him to make his contributions. Yeah right! And the last time he concocted and implemented the show of anger, and walked out with his bajo papier, a certain distinguished Member of the Parliament caught him smirking contentedly, just as he stepped out the door.
Each Member of the SLP Cabinet, without exception, is a graduate of Saint Lucia’s Hard Knocks University, so they understand the game. As “The Foreman” reminded us recently, these Members of Cabinet, and of the Parliament, played those “T-A-B-C games” when they were little boys and girls in Gros Islet, Babonneau, Marchand, Foux-a-Chaud, Laborie, Soufriere, Micoud, etc. Every Saint Lucian child who had just basic “boy days” and “girl days”, can see right through Allen’s pipindoo.
My contention is that notwithstanding the barrel-full of papers, which he obviously carries and drops on his table, to hopefully impress Ossimo, he is simply unprepared to respond intelligently to the ruling Party’s submissions. He has not mustered the discipline that is needed to sit down, read, and analyze the issues.
What is the crux of the matter? What is really Allen’s problem? It is my most profound conviction that Allen Chastanet simply does not have the intellectual capacity to adequately respond to the various bills presented by the SLP administration for the following reasons.
Firstly, Mr. Chastanet does not appear to me, to be an Economist. Neither does he appear, to me, to be technically qualified in any related field, to intelligently prepare himself for discussions at the level of the Parliament of Saint Lucia, and certainly not on the opposite side of a distinguished Economist like Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre.
Certainly, a man who thinks that an Excise Tax, is an “Exercise Tax”, and who repeated “Exercise Tax” eight times in a Budget debate, has no business pretending that he has passed any exam in Economics.
And I speak with the authority of a graduate with a Master’s Degree in Economics, and 35 years of experience in the practice of Economic Planning, Economic Development Programming and Management, International Relations Management, and International Negotiations and Diplomacy.
But on the Government of Saint Lucia website, the Member for Micoud South, and LOO, is described as an “Economist”. I have consistently maintained – 5 times now – that he must show his Economics Degree to the nation, but he has firmly refused to do so. Timothy Poleon needs to continue with his recent apparent decision to finally begin to speak truth to power, and to ask Mr. Chastanet to clear the air once and for all: show us the evidence.
To date, after at least 7 years in Parliament, all Mr. Chastanet is noted for are his petty little overheated bursts of anger – yes, constant anger and quarreling – and nice sounding sound-bytes, and his little pian-pian ideas that one or two supporters send to him by WhatsApp, while Members discuss in the Parliament.
He is not Prime Minister anymore, so his helpers have basically abandoned him, and of course, Geoff Stewart died some years ago. He is shipwrecked and at sea.
This week for example, he suddenly had the bright idea that “the Labour Party administration should build a hotel in Anse La Raye”, to create more employment for the people there, “instead of just the Friday night fish fry”. But this was the same Allen Chastanet, who had promised to build “6 hotels” in Saint Lucia during his 2016-2021 term as Prime Minister, but didn’t build even one room in Saint Lucia, or in Anse La Raye for that matter. And to add insult to injury, his Tourism Minister for 2016-2021, Senator Cockalorum, was the Member of Parliament for Anse La Raye.
Secondly, although he knows that he does not possess the technical capacity required to respond intelligently to anything in the Parliament, Mr. Chastanet refuses to burn the midnight oil, and prepare himself in advance for discussions. In other words, he is not only technically incapacitated, he is also too lazy to even try to prepare himself. He does not have the discipline to prepare himself, in advance of his appearances in the Parliament. It has been said that he does not have the ability to think about any particular matter for more than 10 minutes. But I think the main problem is laziness.
The best example of the gross laziness of this Member of Parliament – and Leader of the Opposition – is his main political strategy since the elections of 26th July 2021, when the people left only him and Bradley in the Parliament. What is that strategy? It is Allen’s refusal to begin the hard work of reorganizing, rebranding, refreshing, refocusing, restructuring and re-invigorating the United Workers Party. That is too much hard work for the lazy Allen. This fruit fell very far from the original Chastanet tree. No wonder Ozzie Boy has given up on the Party, and on Chastanet in particular.
Does he know how hard Member of Parliament Stephenson King worked to reorganize, refocus, and reinvigorate the UWP, in preparation for that Party’s return to the seat of government about two decades ago?
So, given his profound laziness, his best political strategy to respond to the powerful, well-oiled Philip J Pierre SLP behemoth, is to lead a pantomime, a bunch of sycophants and jokers, a road show of desperate UWP supporters, demonstrating for no clear cause in the streets, dressed up like clowns in senior citizens pampers, OMG; UWP leaders cussing up SLP leaders and supporters, UWP leaders suggesting the “shooting down of SLP politicians”; UWP leaders threatening to “burn down” the homes of SLP leaders and supporters, and of course the main ingredient, UWP leaders telling lies, lies, and more lies about the SLP administration, in the hope that some mud will stick. This is straight out of the Cambridge Analytica Manual: “tell a lie, over and over, a thousand times, and most of the fools who don’t like to read and do their own research, will believe the lie”.
Garde L’eta UWP on the eve of Saint Lucia’s 45 years as an independent democracy in the Caribbean. Pure “crapola” as the Political Philosopher, Winston Springer, (RIP) has described the UWP’s every lost, lazy, ludicrous fantasy.
The United Workers Party is like Allen in Wonderland on the 45th Anniversary of the Independence of Saint Lucia. What a shame!
