By John R. Lee
For many, Saint Lucia is not a Nation-State. It is Real Estate. Plantation Estate. To them, the citizens are former slaves, servants, workers, employees of hotels and shops and stores and supermarkets.
People to be easily ignored, dismissed, used. Who have few rights if any, and are of little importance. Except as votes to be bought for every five years.
Those who hold financial and other power are often openly contemptuous of the average citizen;
- Does a country get the government it deserves?
- How do citizens arrive at a mature, thinking consciousness that makes them choose leaders and government that truly care about the basic needs of the people?
- What does it mean to be a Nation-State?
- Not some planter’s estate? Not some piece of real estate to be bought and sold by rich land speculators, with no thought of the citizens who occupy the land that is their birthright?
The world and these small islands are collapsing rapidly into authoritarianism, anarchy, crime, open corruption, rule by lawless supremacists of various stripes.
One obvious solution by political, financial and other powers will be ruled by police and military force, states of emergency, overthrow of constitutional rights, suppression of citizens’ rights, election-rigging or blatant election-theft, arrest of any person or persons seen as offering opposition to the dictatorship (called “operatives.”).
Anyone, regardless of political affiliation or no political affiliation. The world, this Caribbean, this Nation-State is at a brink. And so many are asleep, given over to partisanship, feteing, refusal to observe health protocols, little personal self-discipline, no regard for moral and ethical standards, little serious thinking.
So the dictators and their accomplice-deceivers, waving trinkets, bread-scraps and circuses, seduce the careless, heedless people, with little effort. And the people fight each other, to the death – with gun, cutlass, fire, various cruelties, killing of homeless, killing of dogs, rape – as the autocrats enjoy the show from their comfortable resorts.
The Land, The People, The Light. A State. Not Real Estate. Not Plantation Estate!
Source: Original publication
