By Earl Bousquet

   The island has already been voted in 2025 by prominent regional financial and economic analysts as one of the Top Ten Best Performing Caribbean Economies and one of the Top Ten Caribbean Nations with the Best Medical Services.

   Since taking office in 2021 after handsomely winning the July 26 General Elections that year, this administration has found the ways and means to shield consumers from increasing prices for food and fuel following the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting Supply Chain problems, as well as the inflationary effects of the multifarious trade and related sanctions that came with the war in Ukraine.

   Millions are spent monthly subsidizing food and fuel prices, as well as to: pay outstanding debts at home and abroad, inherited outstanding backpay to public servants, raise pensioners’ benefits, award Christmas bonuses, reduce school costs for parents, assist private preschools, repair and upgrade schools and public buildings, build and fix roads, construct new jetties, increase assistance to the most-needy, assist fishers and farmers affected by hurricanes, address and reduce outstanding social problems in many areas and invest the most-ever by any government to better equip the police and protect citizens in the ongoing fight against crime.

   This administration, in less than four years, has delivered on the 2021 election campaign promises of ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) at every sitting of the House of Assembly and Senate, while undertaking to restore earlier holistic plans for the OKEU hospital, completing the St. Jude Hospital and the Hewanorra International Airport (HIA) extension and expansion plan, completing the Millennium Highway project, implementing the inherited Global Ports Holding (GPH) plan and delivering the Halls of Justice in Castries.

   Likewise, each of the island’s 17 constituencies -bar none- has benefitted from government’s assurance of equal spread of resources and sharing of opportunities.

   At the regional and global levels, this administration has identified squarely with the Global South and fellow Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the common quest for more cooperation and better coordination across borders, seas and skies, while pursuing Loss and Damage from the northern nations that accelerate Climate Change.

   Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders are again glad to be able to deal with a Saint Lucia they can trust to stand by its words and judged by its actions at home and to promote regionalism, especially in the areas of regional transportation and sustainable development.

   The island’s Citizenship by Investment (CIP) program continues to fund projects that benefit the nation in the absence of the traditional banana dollar and the tourism industry continues growing by leaps and bounds as new investments outpace expectations and new hotels promised on the campaign trail start taking shape.

   Development and expansion plans for Gros Islet and Rodney Bay are proceeding apace and everywhere is earmarked for something by an administration bent on ensuring its policies ‘Put Saint Lucians First’ and making its admiration great again within the OECS and CARICOM -and on the world stage.

   Indeed, this administration has been able to attract needed assistance and cooperation from and with Saudi Arabia, while strengthening ties with other nations in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and other Caribbean nations.

   Saint Lucia cannot prevent the USA from deporting undocumented migrants or imposing tariffs on imports in ways that reverberate on small island states, but the government has already taken early steps to assess the impacts such developments will have on the island and its people by appointing related ministry-led committees.

   Prime Minister Pierre, also responsible for Finance and Economic Development, the Youth Economy and National Security, also continues going where others haven’t to ensure longevity in the government’s ability to save today for a better tomorrow by announcing plans for establishment of a Sovereign Wealth Fund.

   Anyone paying even the least attention to global events today and examining how they’ll continue affecting small island nations tomorrow will tap Prime Minister Pierre on the back, instead of slapping him on the wrists, especially considering how he’s been able to marshal the island’s economic recovery while finding the resources to continue subsidizing food and fuel products -all that while also increasing public investment and expenditure and paying national debts (at home and abroad) satisfactorily.  

   But never mind all these positives, those who don’t wish to see and acknowledge simply close their eyes and play blind, instead fantasizing on hopes that something (even terrible-enough) will happen to stop the government in its tracks an on its quest to break the dividing electoral cycle of the past by seeking to secure a second term.

   Sadly, Caribbean political parties still mired in the deeply-dividing traditional colonial ‘Government vs Opposition’ Westminster parliamentary and partisan modes of approach to governance still therefore see their roles in Government and Opposition as respective parties taking exclusive turns at the helm of the ship of state and excluding the opposition.

   Operating merely as “Winners” and “Losers”, such parties, in and out of office, make mockery of democracy by engaging in ‘Paramountcy of the (Ruling) Party’ or ‘Opposing for Opposing Sake’, some in opposition are even prepared to unashamedly adopt anti-national positions publicly, to hopefully score partisan points.

   Banking on achieving regime change by any means they may consider necessary or possible, such parties continue to approach elections by spinning yarns and telling tales that tell more of their inability and unwillingness to face and speak truthfully in politics.

   Their propagandists concentrate on tone instead of content, on optics instead of actual realities, but, like everywhere else, such mis-leaders and mis-informers are also losing public appeal -even on their own home turf- as voters increasingly tend to opt today to dump traditional opposers of everything in exchange for proposers of nothing-at-all.

   Experiences in Europe and North America in 2023 and 2024 have shown that voters are ready to go to any and all extremes, even to vote against their long-term interests, simply to punish ruling parties that mislead and fail to deliver on solemn promises.

   Unable to influence voters to understand their confusing arguments, some parties will revert to use of Information Technology (IT) to mislead citizens online, their every post and platform intended to be a proverbial ‘Last Post’ for governing parties, while treating voters like one popular Trinidadian comedian described: “By removing the M from Masses after they take office…”

   Also unable to class Saint Lucia into that bracket ahead of elections due in 2026, the opposition started 2025 taking aim at the ruling party’s theme of ‘Protecting the Victory’ and the Government’s continuing bid to earn the SLP another five years.

   Having broken in 2021 the interesting revolving cyclical regime changes that came with successive general elections in 2006, 2011 and 2015, the SLP and the current administration have every good reason to want to request more time to continue its demonstrably better management of the nation’s business.

   The mixed SLP-led administration’s declared intention to proceed to Republicanism is also a new road that Saint Lucia will have to follow -though differently than the past 46 years, this time with more emphasis on accepting that the island exists on a shared planet inhabited by citizens in mainly developing nations, increasingly led by governments more-willing to look inwards and to embrace across seas and skies, for the common benefit of Humankind.