So Foreigners Will Control Our Ports

On more than one local radio station, they are calling us “Clown Country”. Other critics insist that Saint Lucia is not a “real place”, a reference to the extraordinary things occur in our space on a regular basis.

On social media, the characterizations of Saint Lucia have been equally damning and disparaging with people expressing disillusionment, disgust and dismay with what has been trending in their island these past 14 months since we elected the Saint Lucia Labour Party to office.

The latest horror story has to do with the decision by the Pierre government to enter into an agreement with a foreign entity for the operation of the Castries and Soufriere ports. The biggest surprise in this is the fact that no details of the agreement have been publicized, neither by SLASPA nor by the government. Since then we have heard statements by one operatives of the SLP that the agreement is one for the management of the ports.

There have however, been other reports of a $47 million deal between the government and the foreign entity. These reports say that the two ports will be sold/leased to this entity for 30 years with the option of an extension for another 10 years. With the new arrangements Mr. Pierre is making for the development of Hewanorra International Airport, it means that for the first time our air and sea ports will be under foreign control.

This is a shocking turnaround for the SLP which traditionally has been highly critical of foreign investment when in opposition and has and lambasting the United Workers Party with its false claim of selling our country to foreigners. Could you believe this? A John Compton UWP administration created SLASPA in 1983. Today, this same SLASPA would, without shame put out a statement on a deal with a foreign company for the operations of our ports that says nothing about the terms and conditions of this agreement?

Our ports are national assets. Imagine, a government that includes a gentleman who has described himself as a “patriot” handing over our ports to foreigners and he sits there and raises no objection? Is this the same Stephenson King that we all know, or rather thought we knew. Is the other former SLP Prime Minister Kenny Anthony in support of the selling of our ports to foreigners? Have the big guns at SLASPA so compromised their integrity that they are prepared to sit by and watch assets that they have nurtured with great success over nearly 40 years slip into the hands of a bunch of foreigners?

Are the various organizations that ought to have a vested interest in Saint Lucia’s development going to sit by and allow this to happen? Will the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture take a stand? What about the trade unions? The other national organizations? What about you the people of Saint Lucia? Are you cool with foreigners controlling your ports for 40 years?, What about the Saint Lucia National Trust? Do you no longer have interest in us controlling national assets.?

Ah! But we hear your loud voices only when the UWP is in power, don’t we?

We are in such a sorry state in Saint Lucia at this point that I cannot even call on the media to take a stand and defend this blatant assault on our national integrity because there is no media anymore. Labour has effectively killed nearly every media house with patronage and jobs. We will discuss this later.

It seems that every time we elect an SLP government into office, our country goes through this agony of concern, uncertainty and regret. Concern about the state of things, uncertainty about the future and regret at having made a bad choice. Flashback to 1979 when a struggle for power resulted in an SLP government being removed from office under public pressure, halfway through its term. Then in 1997, a phenomenon that was branded “new Labour” under Kenny Anthony unleashed its fury of institutionalized corruption, vindictiveness and arrogance that continued into a second term.

It was the era of slogans with a commitment to transparency and accountability that was never honoured, not even after some, like the media, attempted to hold the government to its own declared promises and standards. In 2011, more bluff and puff. A promise to produce “Jobs, Jobs. Jobs” that produced the highest unemployment levels in Saint Lucia’s history and consecutive years of economic and social decline And now in 2021, a litany of lies, broken promises and rampant dishonesty that thankfully the people have been able to discern quite early.

Saint Lucians are asking today: where did we go wrong? Why did we embrace this band of misfits? How could we have traded Allen Chastanet for Philip J. Pierre and the United Workers Party for the SLP? What were we thinking?

In my travels overseas since July 2021, I have met people including Saint Lucians who will not believe that voters turned their backs on Allen Chastanet’s promise of national health insurance that would have provided benefits for all, unemployment benefits and laptops with textbooks for students that would have saved parents thousands of dollars every school year. They refuse to believe that Saint Lucians were so downright stupid to reject an offer of another reduction of the VAT and increased monthly assistance for the needy. Their disbelief stems from their reasoning that Saintt Lucians had every reason to go with Chastanet’s promises because he had promised before, in 2016, and had delivered fully on the “Five to stay alive”.

You see why people are saying that Saint Lucia, the Helen of the West is not a real place? You see why they are calling us clown country? And why is this? Because we threw away all this for Labour’s promise of $1,500 per person in income support that has not been honoured to this day. We showed that we had learnt nothing from their lies of the past: the promise of jobs galore and so on.

On top of all that we stood aside while Labour campaigned to derail every project initiated by the Chastanet government that had the potential of advancing the island’s economic and social development agenda. Even after we saw the changes that had been spectacularly achieved in places like Soufriere, Anse las Raye, Micoud, Choiseul, Gros Islet, Castries South East and elsewhere. Look what UWP candidates were able to do in these communities in just five years—two of which were dominated by Covid—and compare that with the state of Vieux Fort and Castries East and Laborie that voted consistently over 25 years for SLP leaders Kenny Anthony and Philip Pierre and Alva Baptiste.

Saint Lucians will have to demonstrate their national anthem boast about loving their country by taking a stand against this ports agreement. It must not be allowed to stand.