By Earl Bousquet
After too-long feeling treated like he only ranked between ‘Dumb’, ‘Dumber’ and ‘Dumbest’ by relative newcomers in a party he spent the last 40 years building, a former prime minister and leader of Saint Lucia’s United Workers Party (UWP) finally decided he’d had enough – Stephenson King hit-back smart, kicking the proverbial ‘takeovers’ where they never expected: right where the sun doesn’t shine and it’d hurt them most.
The Castries North MP, who was referred to more as a ‘Zegeleg’ (a person of small size) in 1981 when he and the likes of Rufus Bousquet established the UWP’s Youth Arm and the Caribbean Assembly of Youth (CAY) out of Sir John Compton’s legal office on the William Peter Boulevard in Castries.
But four decades later (to the year) and much more bouncing heavyweight dealt a mighty body blow to those he accused of hijacking the party he helped shape and rebranding it to the extent that he ‘can no longer recognize it.’
Fixer
King grew up and shaped himself (as much as possible) in the political image and likeness of the shadow of Henry Giraudy, the UWP’s deceased figurehead legal and political fixer who virtually ‘fixed everything broken’ for the party and its founder leader, Saint Lucia’s first prime minister, Sir John Compton.
By accounts in Rick Wayne’s book ‘ It’ll be alright in the morning’, Giraudy offered to assure worried UWP leadership members concerned that radical George Odlum would have won the UWP’s Heraldine Rock in the banana belt between Cul de Sac and Roseau that ‘It’ll be alright in the morning!’ And true to his word, everything was indeed alright in the morning.
Working for years employed in his mentor’s office, King would, with Giraudy’s guidance, become a co-founder of the UWP Youth Arm and the party’s general secretary, successively winning the Castries North seat.
Stabbing
Criss-crossing between Giraudy and Compton’s legal and political offices, King (also derisively described by Odlum as ‘The Messenger’) would become such a confidante that Compton eventually appointed him interim prime minister and later confirmed him in the post in 2007, after an April 30 heart attack induced by a Cabinet Palace Coup affected a break in ties with China and recognition of Taiwan.
Only King and fellow Cabinet minister Lennard ‘Spider’ Montoute turned down the invitation to pull the Chinese carpet under Sir John, the other ‘Super Eight’ ministers all mortally stabbing their leader in the back.
Sir John would die later that year and was replaced by his daughter Jeannine as MP for his traditionally safe Micoud South seat and King would lead the government for the rest of its term between 2007 and 2011.
Rocky road
But it was indeed a rocky road for King, and Jeannine Compton.
The late leader’s daughter, a virgin MP, honestly declared what she did with her share of the ‘million dollars’ she (and the other seven UWP MP’s) each allegedly received from the Taiwanese in the deal brokered for the tie break with Beijing.
But her honesty became her undoing as she’d certified (her critics said ‘publicly exposed’) that Taiwan did in fact pay millions directly and not through the consolidated fund to the ‘Super Eight’.
Sir John’s daughter and successor would thereafter be forever hounded by her colleagues for ‘letting the cat out of the bag’, eventually being punishingly and squeezed out of the seat for her grave error of parliamentary commission and omission by admission.
After the fact
Long years before COVID, King would also back then, get more than his fair share of political distancing by the ‘Super 8 Cabinet’ colleagues he now led, but who also comprised a numerical majority in the Cabinet he now chaired.
Boxed into definitely having to implement a decision he opposed, King flirted with Taiwan accordingly, never mind Wayne having also exposed that Sir John had indeed prepared a crystal-clear case outlining why he didn’t feel Saint Lucia should break with China.
Learning of the coup plot ahead of time, Sir John summoned a Cabinet meeting for midday to explain why Saint Lucia would not recognize Taiwan, but the Super 8’s meeting was called for 11 am at the ministry of foreign affairs. But the awaiting prime minister reportedly suffered a massive heart attack after hearing (after-the-fact ) on the state-owned Radio Saint Lucia (RSL) newscast at 1:00 pm that day – ‘The Saint Lucia Government’ had broken ties with China and recognized Taiwan.
Tumultuous
King’s leadership of the UWP after Sir John’s passing was tumultuous.
Then tourism minister, the unelected Senator Allen Chastanet successfully challenging him for the post of UWP leader and the elected Castries North MP found himself leading the government and ruling party in Cabinet and parliament; but with Chastanet as the virtual backseat driver.
Chastanet would also work out ‘a deal’ with the late veteran Micoud South MP Arsene James for a smooth succession in Sir John’s traditional ‘safe seat’ ahead of the 2016 general elections.
The UWP won, catapulting Chastanet to the twin top posts of prime minister and party leader. King was thereafter relegated to the parliamentary backbench.
Most millionaires
By then, King also had the unenviable record of leading the government with the most Cabinet ministers becoming millionaires virtually overnight, many also finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, some also being arrested and/or charged for, or accused of everything from ‘tax evasion to traffic violations.’
King’s inherited Cabinet included the most MPs ever in Saint Lucia’s history to have had millions of dollars of foreign political contributions channelled to private accounts established for suspected disguised payments and expenditures, leading to an official four-year-long inquiry into the expenditures of local government funds and a forensic audit that documented countless charges of illegal and/or irregular related financial dealings with ‘Taiwanese money’.
The investigation led to allegations and eventual formal charges against several former UWP Cabinet ministers, candidates and top party functionaries between 2007 and 2011. The judicial process took so long that the 2016 general elections came, the UWP won – and the charges against former ministers (now back in Cabinet) simply disappeared, virtually ‘Gone with the Wind…’
Powerless
King would spend the 2016-2021 period in office but virtually powerless – appointed by Chastanet as infrastructure minister, but with most of the important ministerial responsibilities shifted to the new ‘Department of Economic Development’ led by Castries South-East MP, Guy Joseph; the prime minister’s most-favoured minister, political advisor, strategist and tactician, all-in-one.
King would eventually be described as ‘Minister for Pothole Repairs’, the power for financing major roads and infrastructural development projects involving air and seaports also having been shifted to Joseph.
The uneasy relationship with Chastanet and King was quite evident all along, the former prime minister and party leader, after 35 years in parliament, relegated to back-burner status while Joseph became the clear driver of government policy and heir-apparent to Chastanet, if only by words and actions, including allocation of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ‘direct purchase’ awards to friendly contracting firms without bidding, especially when ‘acting prime minister and minister of finance’.
Signs
The first public sign of King starting to place more than just social distance between himself and Joseph came last month when the infrastructure minister made what he ensured he described officially and publicly as his very ‘first visit’ to the Hewanorra International Airport, current hasty reconstruction site, at a time when the contracted company was rushing to drive over a thousand piles into the ground before election day, for an increasingly costly, mainly Taiwan-funded project that won’t see either flights or the light of day before elections.
Thereafter, the local ‘lien-douce’ (wild vine) rumour mill went into a top spin, following King’s very noticeable absence from ‘Flambeau Forum’ – including the launching of the party’s ‘Five-for-Five’ minimum 2021 manifesto and loud reports of quiet discomfort within the UWP leading to demands that candidates be asked to ‘declare their loyalty before nomination day’.
King played his cards close to his chest until he was absolutely ready, avoiding the press, not taking calls and remaining out-of-sight while the rumour mill span.
Cannonballs
On the morning of July 8, King launched his first missile: Social Media photos showed his constituency office being repainted from Yellow to Blue.
The second cannonball across the UWP’s bow was a public statement indicating King would be addressing the nation Thursday, at 8:30 pm on all local stations.
The two cannonballs sparked a train of events that really showed ‘What a difference a day makes’ and reaffirmed that: ‘A day is a long time in politics.’
Damage control
The UWP didn’t wait for King’s announcement, instead, launch an immediate damage-control mechanism and an immediate search for a replacement candidate.
Two names emerged: Saint Lucia’s current High Commissioner in London, former Cabinet minister and UWP chairman Guy Mayers and ex-president of the Senate Jeannine Giraudy-Mc Intyre.
King’s notice of intent to address the nation was also followed by approval from two former Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) candidates who opposed him, including Ubaldus Raymond, who broke with the SLP to join the UWP after 2011 and was appointed effective junior finance minister and leader of government business in the Senate. He later resigned.
Within hours, independent candidate for Choiseul, Dr Alphonsus ‘Ray’ St Rose, announced he’d ‘suspended’ his long-running campaign to allow the selected SLP candidate full leeway in the fight for the seat.
By the time King’s address was due, most other major local TV stations had been commissioned to carry paid UWP programs at the same time, effectively outing King’s light and the pre-recorded address being carried and watched mostly on Richard Frederick’s ‘Can I help You?’ talk show on MBC TV.
Classics
King’s relatively brief address was a scholarly presentation by the ‘son of a maid and a seafarer’ quoting literary classics to make the point that after loyally serving the UWP for four decades he’d lived to have his loyalty questioned and to see the party hijacked and so changed to the extent that he ‘can no longer recognize it.’
Concluding ‘Sa Pa Flambeau!’ (‘This isn’t the Flambeau Party!’) he and other ‘Comptonites’ were proud of having shaped and built, King said he could not, in good conscience, offer himself ‘for another five years’ as a UWP candidate. UWP supporters’ hoped on the mistaken assumption, hope or promise that, ‘It will be alright in the morning!’
Few knew at the time why King also quoted that classic phrase from the title of Rick Wayne’s book about the role played by deceased UWP chairman Henry Giraudy in the 1974 general elections in the battle for the Castries South East seat between the SLP’s radical George Odlum and the UWP’s fiery Heraldine Rock.
But it would turn out that by then, King knew that his favourite political mentor’s daughter had been given the nod over the former home affairs minister; which he saw as a false hope that she could bring the seat home and make it alright for the UWP on the morning after election day.
‘Something Wrong’
King’s address was met with the expected condemnation by the UWP.
At Giraudy-Mc Intyre’s virtual press launch on Friday, July 9, Chastanet called it: “A betrayal of the people of Saint Lucia” and the new candidate saying: “There’s no independent in this race” and “every vote against the UWP is for the SLP.”
Generally, though, responses to King’s unexpected (but not-altogether-surprising) move have been as expected: UWP supporters questioning ‘Why Now?’ and claiming: ‘He should have done it earlier’, none admitting the move could have any effect on their party, some even predicting ‘He’ll lose.’
With SLP supporters cheering the departed UWP stalwart for ‘doing the right thing’, ‘finally saying enough-is-enough and ‘putting Chastanet and Guy (Joseph) in their place(s).’
The general conclusion, however, has been that ‘If King leaves the UWP, then something definitely has to be wrong!’
Can or Can’t
It’s left to be seen whether the daughter of the man George Odlum interchangeably described as the smooth-stepping ‘Fred Astaire’ of local legal, political and electoral drama and the ‘Chustick’ who served like a permanent needle in the opposition’s proverbial rear, will be able to deliver with the fatherly ease so colourfully described by Wayne in ‘It be alright in the morning.’
But if her words are anything to go by, she’s either convinced her political leader she can, or vice versa.
At any rate, the UWP has its work well-cut-out in Castries North, as it tries to erase King’s traditionally unassailable electoral leads by appealing to party supporters to treat him like a traitor, an enemy from within, only worthy of rejection as an independent dressed in blue, under a red umbrella.
Spin
Meanwhile, former potential UWP candidate for Castries South and popular talk show host Timothy Poleon announced Friday night that the party’s new candidate for Castries North will make her first media appearance in that capacity during ‘A special edition of News Spin on Monday evening’ July 12, the fifth anniversary of the first meeting of the Saint Lucia parliament.
King has also been subjected to all bad news his former colleagues could spin against him. He has been accused of being ‘a (Richard) Frederick Poodle’ with claims the former UWP Cabinet minister, whose candidacy is another source of migraine-size headaches for the ruling party, is the engineer and architect behind ‘King’s betrayal.’
Judas?
King has since Monday been widely described by die-hard UWPees as ‘A Judas!’
But one of the ex-pm and UWP leader’s new supporters, who followed him ‘from Yellow to Blue’, offered me the following (also classical) gem of a response: “King is not a Judas, but a Brutus…”
‘Like Brutus told Caesar, King told Chastanet and the UWP: Not that I don’t love you anymore, but I love Saint Lucia more […] ’.
