UWP Should Wheel-and-Come Again!
Elections are not just in the air everywhere in neighbouring Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent & The Grenadines (SVG), with similarities and differences driving the respective campaigns by two sister Labour Parties. The multi-island Eastern-Caribbean-island is seen by most observers as in the midst of another predictable round of the continuing revolving cycle of re-election that’s seen the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) re-elected a record five times. But Saint Lucia’s race is between a ruling party seeking re-election after a series of similar but rotating results in the three general elections before 2021. Candidates are stomping the ground in all-17 constituencies, ahead of an election still not dated – and with a full year before one is constitutionally due. Campaigning is in full swing, with sitting MPs and hopeful challengers clashing aloud every weekend from rival platforms. As traditional with Eastern Caribbean elections campaigns, the Saint Lucia government is relying on its delivery record in its first four years since taking office on July 26, 2021, while the opposition offers itself as a better alternative. The opposition – with only two elected MPs, is trying to move Heaven and Hell – even Heaven into Hell – to try to convince voters the positive changes they’re feeling and seeing in the last four years are just illusions. The ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) and Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre are seeking a second term and the opposition United Workers Party (UWP) is asking voters to select it again only 50 months after suffering its second-worst rejection by voters since independence (1979). In 1997, the SLP (led by Dr Kenny D. Anthony) defeated the UWP 16-1; and in 2021, the SLP (under Prime Minister Pierre) took office with the UWP only able to secure its two current seats out of the 17 it contested. Again facing the same combination of allied forces that sealed the UWP’s fate under the same leadership four years ago, the UWP is going heads over heels to sell its unbelievable claim that PM Pierre and the SLP-led administration have ‘done nothing’ since taking office. The parties are again using IT to their best advantages, and the next election is being fought as much online as off, reflecting the usual deployment of each side’s best skills at either telling it like it is – or like it’s not. Unfortunately, online attractions distract most netizens from the nitty-gritty issues affecting offline citizens in many communities, too-many believing no-one is anyone if you’re not online. So, too many offline citizens are disregarded and treated as lesser-beings in the average Netizens’ imagined national political stratosphere. The local Netscape citizenry will examine macro issues from wishful perspectives, most who back the opposition swimming against proverbial tides to make it appear this is government, is simply the worst Saint Lucia’s ever had. But, like in SVG — where even voters stanchly opposed to Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves and his ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) will openly tell you ‘The opposition can’t run the country’ – Saint Lucia voters can also see the difference between delivery and recycled promises. The opposition’s recently-launched Seven-Point-Plan that’s hardly attracted attention beyond its press lunch, its leadership now flogging a dead horse: trying to pressure the Prime Minister into calling the election before he’s ready to ring the bell. The opposition continues beating its head against a yellow brick wall, its leadership being driven by the wind of its unabashed sense of exceptional entitlement and eternal political class privilege comes out in almost every public statement regarding the elections. But PM Pierre isn’t hanging his party’s re-election hat where their hands can’t reach — not-at-all ignoring the opposition, but instead canvassing every possible vote to secure what most Saint Lucians at home and abroad will consider a deserving second term. Aware that the prime minister is the only one who can and will – by law — ring the bell — and not at the UWP’s convenience – the UWP continues behaving like Saint Lucians can no longer distinguish between cheese and talk, between birds in hand and those in the bush, between what they see and what’s invisible. The opposition, morbidly fearful of positive effects the opening of the St. Jude Hospital will have on voters (including its supporters), is hoping-against-hope that something – anything – will delay, postpone or prevent the grand opening from taking place. A real reason the opposition wants an early election is obviously to save costs, as weekly campaigning doesn’t come cheap — and with another complete year before elections must be called, another 48 weekly campaign stomps and stops will add up to more-than-a-little ‘Ching Ching’ for the UWP’s traditional financiers. Yet-again, the next contest will be between the SLP and the UWP — and until an election date is known, analyses will continue to be based more on partisan or personal speculation, than on assessments of how undecided voters will react to how the parties and candidates are running their campaigns. Popular support for Saint Lucia’s two major parties usually borders on running down-the-middle; and even if the SLP was to win all the seats in the upcoming election (as it aims to), the UWP will still have enough support to keep its hopes alive for another five years. Meanwhile, politicians on both sides are asking voters to choose between continuity and starting all-over-again, between keeping a good government in office and voting to hope and trust that an opposition party and leader they utterly rejected just four years ago, will now have found the evasive mechanisms for Good Governance that eluded them during two long terms (2006-2011 and 2015-2021). But then, even before the bell rings, the choice is clear as Saint Lucian voters get ready to choose between what most see as good and what the usual suspects in the opposition is worse than bad. Instead of messing with masking on Monkey Mountain, the UWP should simply be advised to ‘Wheel and come again!’