A Nation in Decline

by James Stanislaus

Joseph Goebbels was a German Nazi philologist and Minister of Propaganda in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. He appreciated and understood the potency of falsehoods and proclaimed, “If you repeat a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The St. Lucia Labour Party has unfailingly been a zealous follower and fanatical practitioner of this Goebbels’s doctrine

Today, the voices of most St. Lucians are synchronized in one despondent and regretful chorus that the Prime Minister of St. Lucia is not running our Fair Helen satisfactorily. The most deafening and persistent grievances, are the spiraling, out-of-control cost of living primarily caused by, amongst many others, the escalating cost of groceries, the exorbitant price of fuel at the pump, and the unaffordable price of cooking gas, all exacerbated by the lack of local and or foreign direct investment into the economy. Putting all of these concerns together, the nation ends up with a volatile and debilitating cocktail. Therein, lies the reason for the widespread sentiment, that the Prime Minister is doing an appalling job of managing the affairs of our country.

The other area which has the nation very concerned is one of honesty. Having achieved a thirteen-to-two mandate, the PM has evidently been carried away by his party’s election success to the extent that he apparently believes he can do no wrong. He has allowed himself to believe the fallacy that the people think like him in giving priority to “protecting the victory” over everything else. Fortunately, for St. Lucia, the people gave him no such mandate nor their undertaking to do so. Thankfully, the country has realized its malaise under this SLP administration and moved on twelve months ago as the signs of a failing state steadily became a reality based on the lack of earnings and viable opportunities for the ordinary man.

We have often heard from the Prime Minister that he knows how to play the game of politics, but there comes a time, as Abraham Lincoln, the 15th President of the United States of America knew and declared, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Our Prime Minister must be oblivious to the age-old adage that a hungry man is an angry man. As astute a politician, as the Prime Minister would like the nation to believe he is, by now, he should have realized, that there is no way he can continue to deny or obfuscate the reality that St. Lucia and St. Lucians are tottering under the poundage of persistent high inflation, high unemployment, and an economy which has almost grounded to a halt.

Mr. Prime Minister, more than half of your supporters and all of the supporters of UWP are fully aware of the broken state of the nation. I dare say their numbers represent a vast majority of the people. Your futile promises to our citizens in the diaspora and those at home no longer carry weight. The people have no confidence in your empty promises. Your recent presentation to the diaspora in New York was a major disappointment and you need to read the tea leaves very carefully before it is too late, that is, if it isn’t already too late. I urge you to be realistic, take the time, and be honest with yourself, instead of remaining in a state of fantasy, a self-inflicted psychosis, created out of believing your own lies. The public is now convinced that you are no longer in charge or capable of handling our nation’s affairs. Instead, you are being led by individuals of dubious character and questionable capacities and abilities who have you completely hoodwinked.

Your most recent ‘boo-boo’ occurred as a result of your acceptance of the ridiculous advice of your former boss regarding the Panama Bank fiasco. When are you going to develop the fortitude to reject the garrulous and confused advice of your former boss? Even more ludicrous, is your ‘Tim Tim Plan” to expend the two hundred million dollars Saudi loan into the rehabilitation of an eighty-year old structure instead of completing the larger, new, modern, purpose-built structure for fifty million dollars or one-quarter of the cost. Mr. Prime Minister, this truly remains the biggest ‘dirty joke’ of all. It is unfortunate, for the world to see a Prime Minister repeatedly make such a series of blunders. St. Lucians are far from being impressed with these gaffes and you need to get your act together based on the competitive world in which we presently live.

My people, beware of the lies, half-truths, and duplicity of this SLP Administration. As I said earlier, they are unashamed zealots of the Nazi Goebbels propaganda philosophy. Here is the full, insidious, and obnoxious text from which the quote at the beginning of this article was taken. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic, and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda