Dear Sir
‘I am ashamed of you’ — ‘you should be ashamed of yourself’ seems the dichotomy and double standard of prime minister Allen Chastanet, at seemingly multiple attempts to denigrate certain media professionals. Cheekily, he seems oblivious of rogues’ gallery of more noteworthy, surrounding the railway wagon.
Revealing some inconvenient truths, journalists cannot be treated as domestic enemy. To quote John Adams, “the liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom.”
It is also ascribed that media-bashing is as old as the nation itself. [Put in there sex workers, who are now deemed, essential workers, thanks to COVID-19. But let’s not digress.] George Washington once referred testily to the “infamous scribblers” who covered his administration.
The reprehensible practice that regrettably passes for acceptable rhetoric in Saint Lucia is doing just that —destroy the objective and moral boundaries of society.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself’ — fit cheekily, to the embarrassment bestowed on Saint Lucia in the last five years. A deodorizer of ‘unethical judgement’ and ‘dogma’ that permeates the Saint Lucian society. And comparable with COVID-19, a serious threat to public health, and the false theories that give legs to vaccine hesitancy, misrepresentation is also outstandingly bad to the governance of a country.
This darkens Saint Lucia today, as streamlined in the “amalgamated” budget address 2021/22, destroying conventions, policy and institutions of governance.
At the last performance in parliament, prime minister, Allen Chastanet presenting the appropriation bill for 2021/22, performed his best at pronunciation, reading and the art of con-manship as written, which caused many in my study group to cringe.
To top this off, politicians, defenders and political financiers could not help themselves, listening to political dogma at the justification of ‘Social Stabilisation’ page 16, of the budget address, on popular radio. The preface to this is, with all the university degree holders in the public service and editors of the budget address, the burden of proof was bequeathed to a lesser competence, at whacking the facts and their truth.
Luckily, most Saint Lucians’ are aware that the socio-economic outlook of the country is very sick, with symptoms hiding in plain sight, like the coronavirus. Driving home this message is the game of snakes and ladders … with the amusing effect and outlier[s] at work in an election year.
In recent times, people with acclaimed extra-terrestrial powers have activated the prediction phenomena, with an election victory for the United Workers Party (UWP), inclusive of additional parliamentary seats. This, however, calls to question the push-back in search of extra time, to call the general elections. In particular, an administration that is comfortable with the term — convenient — to transcend the laws of nature and the laws of Saint Lucia.
The assumptions of an extra-terrestrial administration cannot be explained by science. By definition, an extra-terrestrial manifestation or event requires a ‘Josie Ghost’ and a ‘doggy style’ apparent approach to get things under control. And in this order of existence, we should be understanding of our British and French heritage.
Upon examination of the landscape of Saint Lucia — I am ashamed of the UWP led-administration of Saint Lucia — and the cabinet of ministers. The true enemies of the people — and democracy — are those who try to suffocate truth by vilifying and demonizing the messenger.
Thomas Jefferson once quipped that he’d rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.
Monica Fevrier
