By Caribbean News Global contributor
CASTRIES, St Lucia, (CNG Politics) – The Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) on Friday, January 29, remind Saint Lucians that the motion of no confidence in the prime minister and minister of finance Allen Chastanet that articulated deep concerns, anxieties and the feeling of hopelessness among large sections of the Saint Lucian society, continues to manifest.
The SLP in a release said, “events prove historic no-confidence motion was right,” explained the following:
“Two years ago, on January 29, 2019, the Saint Lucia Labour Party tabled a motion of no-confidence in this country’s prime minister Allen Chastanet. While the United Workers Party (UWP) majority in the House of Assembly defeated the Motion, events in the country since then have justified our action,” the SLP added. “The tabling of that motion has been proven right because Saint Lucia is in a worse position today than it was two years ago and that is principally because of the prime minister’s poor leadership of the government.”
Leader of the parliamentary opposition and leader of the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP), Philip J Pierre, previously argued that “since the appointment and installation of Chastanet as prime minister and minister for finance, economic growth, job creation and external affairs, Saint Lucia has been governed in a manner that has undermined its constitution, its conventions and practices.”
“We have witnessed a growing abuse of public office, unreasonable and irrational decision-making, unsustainable fiscal deficits, squandering of the state’s financial resources, and a debilitating decline in the public trust and confidence in the prime minister’s ability to govern the country,” he said.
The historic vote against the motion is exacerbated by the failures of the government and collaborators who how have to recon with gross mismanagement by an uncaring administration.
The predictable outcome means the Chastanet-lead administration “has continued to make disastrous decisions-unsustainable borrowing of over $2 billion, misplaced priorities like his insistence on a $600 million loan for the airport in the face of the terrible economic consequences of COVID-19, in particular on the travel and tourism industry worldwide, and his dreadful handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saint Lucia,” the SLP described.
On Friday, January 29, 2021, the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOH) reported record levels of coronavirus cases with the confirmation of 89 new cases of COVID-19. The total number of active cases in the country to date is 562. The new cases now bring the total number of cases diagnosed to date to 1195.
“To make it worse, the prime minister has revealed his lack of understanding of our people and his disrespect for them when he proudly said to a Canadian interviewer last year that he was a product of Canada. By his actions and his words, prime minister Chastanet has disqualified himself to be prime minister of Saint Lucia,” the SLP release said.
While Saint Lucia is in an election year, three of the eleven UWP parliamentarians can pardon themselves and relieve the pain and suffering of the nation by siding with the six opposition members, representing the magic number of nine; or render themselves independent parliamentarians and cause parliament to be dissolved.
According to observers, “History will not be kind to those who when they were confronted with moment of truth collapsed.”
Consequently, “when general elections are held in Saint Lucia later this year, the people of Saint Lucia must demonstrate to the UWP that they no longer have confidence in the prime minister and his ministers. They all must go,” the SLP release concluded.
