A frequent visitor with very-special sentimental interests here, he’d read online about the latest adjustment to local fuel prices -and while he found it ‘admirable’, he also admitted it left him ‘a bit jealous…”
Why? Because, he “still cannot understand how your Prime Minister is able to keep cooking gas prices so-low, for so-long…”
And then he told me: “Your Prime Minister is making ours look small and feel bad!”
I asked why and he responded “Because he is finding ways to find money where my Prime Minister and others in the OECS can’t; and when our people hear the news from Saint Lucia, they pile the pressure on our leader and tell him to ‘Do better…’”
Fact is, Saint Lucians have grown so comfortably accustomed to controlled fuel prices that most don’t even stop to check how many millions of dollars it’s costing the Treasury each month.
True, every meeting of the House of Assembly (since this administration took office in August 2021) has passed or discussed introduction of items delivering on a Saint Lucia Labor Party (SLP) manifesto promise.
From payment of outstanding Public Service salaries to better ‘liveable’ minimum wages for government employees and increases for government pensioners, to increases in allowances for the most-needy and vulnerable, to free ambulance and maternity services for pregnant mothers, to millions distributed to Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), to millions-more still being spent on Police and Crime-fighting services -the list simply goes on-and-on, non-stop…
Mr Friend confessed to feeling “embarrassingly bewildered” (his term) by “the way you’all have mobilized all the tens of millions to finish the burnt-out (St. Jude) hospital, the (Hewanorra) international airport and the Millennium Highway…”
Obviously in tune, he added, “Y’all have brought the Jazz Festival to higher heights, made Carnival so-much-better, observing Emancipation Day and Kweyol Day for a whole month -and now you have a Julien Alfred holiday… Y’all even lowering prices for 100-pound cooking gas cylinders for bourgeois people…”
I responded: “Yes, the benefits are for everyone, including the 100-pound users, who will pay just-over $8.00 less this month…”
I pointed out that apart from Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre being a veteran accountant, “he’s also a practical politician who’s won his seat six consecutive times…” (a record shared only with his predecessor Dr. Kenny D. Anthony).
I concluded, “You don’t just win again-and-again like that if you aren’t doing something very good -and this Member of Parliament for Castries East is in fact doing everything good to improve and increase his support across the most-populous constituency in Castries.”
I recalled driving up Marchand Road a week-or-so before school reopened last month and saw such a long line of mainly women leading to the Marchand Community Centre, that I stopped to ask one of the young ladies: “Has registration of voters started in Marchand?”
She simply laughed and replied: “Money for school books…” -and returned to her place on the line.
I took a cursory glance at the ladies and tried to figure-out how-many were genuine Single-Parent Mothers, or whether I was watching a sample of the scope of fatherly abandonment of parental responsibilities.
But, as I pointed out to Mr Friend, “This is one of the aspects of Caribbean politics that our politicians accept as par-for-the-course -assisting constituents to send children Back to School, sponsoring Christenings, First Communions and Funerals- and all-that without even daring to try to ascertain whether the person voted for them…”
I also mentioned “the need for today’s old and new politicians” to take advantage of the new challenges and opportunities provided by the world situation today “to start encouraging adjustment to the ever-changing realities that do not portend well for Humankind’s future.”
He and I sharing the same political upbringing, I noted that “While the (then pending) strike by US longshoremen (stevedores) would surely have affected the average Caribbean citizens awaiting their Christmas barrels from America, they are workers standing-up to keep their jobs, which they’re fast-losing to hi-tech machines and robots…”
Mr Friend was “not-too-sure” he would “support American stevedores preventing Caribbean poor people from getting their Christmas barrels…”
“But,” I pointed out, “they’re only doing what Caribbean stevedores did across the West Indies in 1938, when they closed all the sea ports by going on strike, not only for better wages, but also for the right to form trade unions…”
I continued, “The new trade unions then formed political parties that pressed for equal rights to vote, which came in 1951 and started the process of the new West Indies Labor Parties across the islands winning all future first general elections by securing more votes than the parties representing the colonial elites.”
He agreed with my historical connection of workers’ fights for their rights in 1938 in the West Indies with those of 2024 in the USA -and that in the 86 years between, colonialism gave way to negotiated Independence and Republicanism in the 1970s and 1980s, starting with Grenada (1973), Dominica (1978) and Saint Lucia (1979).
By 2013, all 14 Caricom member-states were demanding Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide from Europe; and by 2024, “A Caricom representative (Dr June Soomer) chairs the United Nations (UN) Permanent Forum for People of African Descent and the OECS has produced the ‘Fastest woman in the world’ (Julien Alfred) and the ‘World’s fastest triple-jumper’ (Thea LaFond).
But Mr Friend started ending our brief but deep conversation back-to-the-start, saying: “Apart from all that, look how y’all winning everything these days -boxing, swimming, even T-20 Cricket…”
I acknowledged his profound appreciation of the widening effect of Julien Alfred’s inspiration across-the-board, at home and abroad.
But before parting, I duly reminded my good friend: “All that is just more proof that if big prizes can come in small packages, the Caribbean continues proving just-how-true that really is!
