Saturday, July 6, 2013

The Struggle for the leadership of the U.W.P.

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, let's see how may comments we'll get here, merely due to the mentioning of the name "Allen Chastanet."

Anonymous said...

Allen Chastanet is the reversed Barack Obama (where Obama was a minority in a predominantly Caucasian population and Allen is a minority in a predominantly Afro-Caribbean population), and I suspect he will eventually be PM. People are fed-up with the status quo, we need change. Stephenson has been whipped by Kenny so much that he's afraid to talk anymore. CHANGE!

Anonymous said...

Ok, who wrote this?

Anonymous said...

I would recruit Senator Bertha Parle, a no-nonsense expert in all areas of tourism at the local and regional level, who spoke eloquently in the Senate and is unafraid to offend the powers that be, by her scathing criticism of the ‘cocktail’ ambassadors, who waste this small country’s limited financial resources, without endeavouring to bring investments to St. Lucia.

Did Chastnet write this or is the writer confused.

Anonymous said...

Solemn nonsense!

The writer was too ashamed of the deceitful crap and litany of falsehoods, to go to press, not
even with a pseudonym?

'Self-praise' they say 'is no recommendation.'

Anonymous said...

Absent any original thought on economic policy or economic thought or economic direction even, the piece sounds like thinly-veiled self-aggrandizing marketing, or public relations propaganda.

'When your strategy is deep and far-reaching, then what you gain from your calculations is much.

When your strategic thinking is shallow or near-sighted, then what you gain from your calculations is little and you lose before you do battle.

Therefore, victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.'
Sun Tzu

Anonymous said...

I would have given credence to this article if the writer was responsible enough to state his/her identity.

This is another attempt to brainwash the gullible and maintain the 1% while the 99% remain in obedience to the slave masters of the St.Lucian economy.

Your argument is that of a piper,waiting for the chips at the end of the line. It is sad the way thing look at the moment.

Anonymous said...

@July 6, 2013 at 2:26 PM,

One of the iron laws of marketing is that you do not give name recognition to the competition by even mentioning its name. The last three commentators above appear to know something about which you don't know.

They, the UWP gave us one of their usual broomsticks and no-class country bookies as minister of education for years on end. His major accomplishment was to build 'fair-tee' schools.

That bloke was so enlightened that he did not care whether the children were in full attendance or not, or whether they were nutritionally fed well enough to absorb and assimilate what was being taught, or for that matter whether what was being taught was relevant at all for the country's future.

We are just about to embark upon another such round of equally asinine stupidity. A man given a very short stint as an unelected government minister, is being touted as being more than suitable because HIS FATHER has made a mint in the PRIVATE SECTOR. He now has monopoly control over food distribution on the island.

The children of the former slaves are overjoyed, no elated with pride, that a holdover from the plantation period is in control of their food, and soon by proxy in control of the entire country.

Give them back their darn chains. They miss them.

The proxy governor and plantation owner's own personal record is litany of failures: boxing promotion financial waste, an egregious airlift of empty aircraft seats paid for by children of supine for ex-slaves and taxpayers, but the proxy slave owner was not willing to disclose the cost to the public, extravagant spending on a tourism consultancy, with no report and no financial returns to the public purse, revamping operations in Soufriere which the proxy and stand-in new slave owner understood as requiring the firing of the workers there, and having no cajones or moral principles to stand up when it mattered, to the leaches in the 'free for all' UWP cabinet giving illegal tax concessions to a fellow cabinet member, yet not remembering any presence in making that decision in testimony before the OECS Court of Appeals.

Is that the kind of high quality leadership that the Saint Lucian public has been yearning for? If it is then, this really continues to make me sick right to the pit of my stomach.

Anonymous said...

The writer is either not in the loop or is singing for his super. It was Allen Chastenet who first attacked the SLP and put the focus on himself, by accusing them of being convicted for mal-adminstration, after the damning report of financial operations of Town and Village Councils. I need not remind people that public monies sent to the Soufriere Town Council was used to finance the political campaign of Allen Chastenet.

I think Ti Pwen Tout will better serve the interest of Saint Lucia if he causes the hotels, including his Coco Resorts, to remit to the Treasury Department, the millions of dollars in Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT)that were collected from hotel guests and kept in the bank accounts of these hotels. Very True; the Treasury welcome these funds.

Anonymous said...

What has happened to SLP pr? I've had my issue with Kenny Anthony ever since he went up for a third consecutive general election as leader of the party, because I was present at a political meeting near the Vieux Fort square, when he made comments to the effect that power corrupts and when people remain in power for long periods they seem to become corrupt. He said as a result the Labor party had taken a deliberate decision that no leader would go up for more than two consecutive general elections. That, his sacking of the senators, his handling of the Roachemel and Greindberg affairs and one or two other issues aside, I believe he has done a good job. It bothers me when I read and hear people blaming Kenny Anthony and his administration solely for our current state of affairs and not read or hear anything from the SLP pr people. The UWP had VAT down for implementation, they knew about the problems faced by Wasco, they knew that something had to be done about our debt. Kenny Anthony took a decision to address the problems that could make things even worse for us in the future, if not tackled now. He could have decided not to take any of those decisions and have us living like we're in paradise, while the country plunged further into debt. When the reality would hit, we would pay three times what we are right now. So lets make the adjustments to cope with the realities of the time and because of the actions taken now, better days are indeed coming.

Anonymous said...

Pot calling kettle black?

Anonymous said...

Even if "shame" hit you squarely in the face, you will deny its shame!!

Or else; a trip to golden hope is in order - not!!

Anse La Raye said...

Going with the LPM party this time. I don't a rat's ass. All of them the same. I have made my pick. Toute moon ware poo coye sort.

Anonymous said...

In a day and age when SL needs to safeguard its meager resources, we talking about Allen Chastanet????Have we forgotten about Hepple (Not sure about the spelling)? Have we forgot what his own papa said? Look at the debacle and bacchanal with the Taiwanese money and computers in Soufriere and we talking about reverse Obama??? To put Allen Chastanet and President Obama in the same category is an utter insult and disgrace...Obama is intelligent, eloquent and insightful - Allen Chastanet is not.
We as St. Lucians must come off this Massa Mentality...CHASTANET IS THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN TO SL. Quite frankly out of all the politicians in SL, the only person I would vote for is MUSA.

Anonymous said...

Writing an article like this, only brings out the SLP Hounds into full attack mode. They will bite and tear you to bits. Labour have a full catalogue ready for Chastanet, knowing he will be the next man to beat at the next elections. Talking of mistakes, like Kenny/UWP never made any, ever. How low can you get turning to racism to make a point. St.L politics, awa, keep dreaming.
Better times coming soon?
For your sake, I do hope so. Enrouge.

Anonymous said...

Allen Chastanet has no bloodline to slave masters, but Kenny Anthony does. It's the truth.

Anonymous said...

What? Chastanet's family and parents came straight from Europe the day after the first emancipation day here in Saint Lucia? And whilst in Europe, they had no financial interest in any of the plantations in Saint Lucia?

Anonymous said...

Those of us who are steeped into the naivete of only seeing things through the prism of UWP-SLP competition are free to live with the consequences and their stupidity.

There is the realization that just a few of us in Saint Lucia are not beholden to either party. to such an extent to enable us to speak our minds without bias or malice.

The emergence of the Chastanet hegemony to positions of economic monopoly in food distribution and the monopoly of political power in the distribution of wealth in Saint Lucia is BOTH ominous and sinister.

Should these two forces overlap enabling them to take greater control of the economy and politics of the island, that would usher in a new era of economic slavery.

Blood is thicker than water.

The exponential growth of the cases of conflicts of interest in our already weak judicial environment has the potential for untold hardship for both the consuming public and the voting public.

Those of us who are aware, know fully well that in a parliamentary system we have an automatic system of the dictatorship of the prime minister.

As we have already seen as in the recent case of Egypt, in a fledgling democracy, the maturity of which, some of us still aspire, after the votes are cast and counted, the d-EVIL takes the hindmost.

Our own creole saying warns us. When your friend's beard is on fire, take water and hose down your own.

Anonymous said...

The above writer -- July 8, 2013 at 9:40 AM.
Just to let everyone know, I do not live in St.Lucia, but I agree with the writer 100%.

Too much political bias in St. Lucia.

Anonymous said...

Watch out for a quickened pace of incidences of conflicts of interest and rampant violations of ethical standards.

If the past is any indication of the future, does the involvement of this character with the Tuxedo Villa Affair, going all the way to the OECS Court of Appeals, does it tell whether or not this bloke and his comrades in the UWP cabinet have a moral compass or not?

He did not stand up to the goons in the cabinet. Do you honestly believe that he will do better with his own father?

Can he pass legislation that will hurt his father's financial empire?

Anonymous said...

As the dominant supplier of food stock on the island, you do not have to be in government to be influential. He who controls the food, controls the people--their levels of anger and frustration too.

What if supermarket owners banded together to make the prices of products beyond government control so exorbitant that people could no longer afford certain "other" essentials? What if other businesses followed suit? (Does Price Control still apply in the wake of VAT? Who determines the value added to the items?)

Politicians can crow ad infinitum, the reality is that businesspeople (employers) possess far more power than they care to leverage.

Anonymous said...

Last two bloggers, I could not agree with you more...I share the same sentiments expressed.

"He did not stand up to the goons in the cabinet. Do you honestly believe that he will do better with his own father?"

"He who controls the food, controls the people--"...So simple to understand, yet some are blinded by political colour!! Very sad, indeed!


Anonymous said...

Conflict of interest represents the greater part of the reason why Saint Lucians cannot -- even today -- shake themselves loose of advisedly, its banana fruit reaping industry.

The longest serving prime minister of Saint Lucia, with an unquestionable vested interest in his banana farms in Micoud, could not bring himself to see any other alternative to simply banana harvesting -- the end-product of his own Mahaut farm -- in which he was ... in many more ways than one ... heavily invested.

Even when the academics were writing papers on the demise of the industry for the Windward Islands, and the very significant departure of Geest from the island, the blind could not see the writing on the wall.

Even the most recent political victory of the UWP was in part predicated on an empty promise and those Pollyanna statements of Saint Lucia's ambassador to Europe, of a revival of this failed mode of economic production, supported by extremely shallow economic thinking where there was absolutely no concern for value-added.

Conflict of interest by the political directorate in Saint Lucia -- even in the recent past -- has condemned this economy to ignoring the opportunities offered by the development of human capital, leading to its very shaky reliance and inordinate dependence today, on tourism.

Anonymous said...

This article is not worth the paper it was written on or should that be the few bytes used. That said Chastanet would be better served by claiming authorship , stop hiding behind anonymity.
What is his area of expertise and on what basis can the claim be made that he masters the knowledge of Economics- On please give me a break - Where would Alan be without Daddy ? Is that what we have been reduced to and define now as Leadership material?

Anonymous said...

Lucians watch you all bread...Allen Sheesenet CANNOT relate to the average Lucian. King might not be the best but, he is definitely the 'lesser' of two evils.

Anonymous said...

King has an inferiority complex, he's even afraid of Kenny.

Anonymous said...

And pray, why shouldn't, he, KING, be afraid of Kenny? Intellectually, being charismatic, academically, etc...Kenny rise way above King.

Please let's not compare oranges to apples!! Great difference!

Anonymous said...

@ July 7. 8,22AM

If it is true Allen Chastanet is owing the government Accomodation Tax with the Coco Resort, well, he have a serios problem!

Anonymous said...

So if Chastanet becomes Prime Minister/Minister of Finance, would he have any interest at all, or even pretend to take a stand against his father's monopolistic pricing that continues to fleece the public at the supermarket checkouts?

Or, can we expect carte blanche INCOME TAX and EXCISE DUTY REMOVAL for HOTELS and the distributive trades, as a cover to avoid or counter CONFLICT OF INTEREST CHARGES?


Should this happen will this have a negative impact on the government revenue collection? Will that positively impact our debt burden?