By Earl Bousquet

   But it’s extremely heart-breaking to hear and see what’s being presented for and passing as election politics across the Caribbean these days.

   Take Saint Lucia, where the ruling party, after four years, has built an unchallengeable record of delivering on its campaign promises at every sitting of parliament and improving virtually all aspects of daily life, despite inheriting an economy battered by COVID bad governance and certified economic mismanagement.

   The Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) and its independent elected allies in Cabinet have, despite the strong local effects the COVID-related Supply Chain crisis and later Ukraine-related sanctions, been able since 2021 to consistently create new jobs and has lowered unemployment rates to record levels, subsidized cooking gas, fuel and essential food items and started the biggest infrastructural development, health and education policies and projects, paid outstanding wages and increased pay for public employees, while raising pensions payments for retirees and benefits for the needy.

   The economy is working and increased incomes have led to greater levels of household and disposable income, people shopping more despite higher prices for goods not under government control and every major monthly national public entertainment event sold-out, from Jazz to Carnival to Cricket.

   No one with a normal yardstick will measure the performance of the Philip J. Pierre administration as wanting in overall delivery of possible, so the opposition United Workers party (UWP) is resorting to unusual political gymnastics to create illusionary crises -like invoking fears of superstition to accuse the ruling party of importing evil-spirited African midgets from Nigeria (‘boloms’) to win the next general elections.

   They party’s misleading propogandists knowingly falsely claim the ‘boloms’ were brought by the Nigerian President during his recent week-long visit.

   But that’s not all, as, having willfully blinded itself to the reality of its inability to find fault with the government’s delivery record, the UWP Leader and candidates are also claiming it hadn’t delivered, inventing false claims to try to sully everything from taxation policies to the successful Citizenship By Investment (CBI) funding of major social projects, from housing to vital community projects.

   After failing to repair the southern-based St. Jude Hospital up to 12 years after it was destroyed by fire, the current administration is about to complete its restoration in less than four years under a new and reliable contractual arrangement, but the UWP Leader is now promising he’ll “finish the hospital” the government will most-likely deliver before elections (due latest by October 2026).

   And of course, as per usual, the opposition and its media propagandists have latched on to what they claim is the government’s inability to control crime, as if that was at all possible.

   This administration has spent over EC $80 million of late on supplying the police force and the city police with more of everything, from vehicles and ATVs to motorcycles and a mobile police station, from additional marine craft to more and better weapons, to more use of IT and drones.

   No previous UWP administration has been able to prevent gangs from engaging in gang wars of prevented anyone who’s made their minds-up to kill from doing so, but the opposition continues conveniently cherry-picking on issues like unsolved murder cases and unsubstantiated claims of police mishandling of evidence.

   Yet, while pointing fingers at the police, the UWP has launched a well-known ex-policeman as one of its latest election candidates, the recently-retired officer (also a calypsonian who sang anti-government calypsos during the July Carnival season) now making platform political claims linking ‘politicians’ with ‘crime’.

   But it’s not only Saint Lucia.

   In Guyana for example, the election is being fought by the opposition more online than on-the-ground, also because it too cannot fund fault with the government’s performance and prefers to latch on to allegations of corruption in government while offering nothing more than to do better than everything promised in the ruling PPP/Civic alliances ‘Agenda 2030’ manifesto.

   There too, a rich fugitive from American justice is trying to buy his way into the Presidency, his political manipulators claiming his gold mining and exporting family is richer than the government of Guyana, despite the ruling alliance’s ability to have defied predictions of doom and gloom and ensured the nation’s energy earnings are poured into national development and sharing of national income to households.

   And, like in Saint Lucia, the Guyana opposition parties are all promising to do better than what the governing alliance has delivered and is promising, with possibilities of funding like never before.

   As per usual, political opportunism and misleading propaganda are as alive in Guyana’s opposition as anywhere else opposition parties see no toad to victory and will do any and every thing to try to change people’s minds from judging by what they have to trusting politicians with no reputation for delivering on their usually haughty promises.

   But in both Guyana on Monday, September 1 and Jamaica on September 3, smarter electorates will not easily be encouraged to spit in the sky to turn the truth on its head, to deny realities they’ve lived every day for the past five years under the PPP/C and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP).

   Trinidad & Tobago and Surinam are still reeling from the results of elections earlier this year, both experiencing expected and unexpected regime change, while Barbados and St. Vincent & The Grenadines get ready for their next polls, both expected sooner than later.

   New and old politics are alive and kicking in Bridgetown, Kingstown and Kingston this weekend, with results due from Guyana on Monday night and Jamaica next Wednesday.

   But the politics of desperation is growing, deepening and widening in Saint Lucia, as the opposition tries to present itself as being able to win an election no one else can see happening. And the opposition continues offering old par for new courses!