The Shoemaker, the Jamette and the Barber (Part ii)

A hard day’s night, this Saint Lucia; humorless, maddening as hell, defiant in its half-made-ness, the split personality turned inside out. Yesterday, the collective behaviour resembled Mr. Haywood’s; today, more like the jamette’s. Thanks, Elizabeth, for the correction. The place is near redeemed by the presence of those like you who still wish to see, those who would venture past the screeching and the summoned outrage, those not held hostage by the bind of backwardness and powerlessness, but driven curious about possibility.
The present and pressing debate on the capacity of the ruling regime to take real and effective charge of the economy can be located in three concentric factors: The first is the context within which the second factor is framed, the second factor being the quality of economic management, and the third is the politics within the economics. Hmmm… impressive. In a neat, mathematically reasoned world, the relationships would approximate an elegant theory of relativity where the context becomes the sum of the economics and the politics, divided by time, within which all else revolves. But this is Saint Lucia where we awake on a morning, to the sound of Jook Bois.

The context /the matrix

The context is known in the techno-speak of the Wachowski brothers as the matrix. The relationship between our political parties and the media is a collective, circular, and constant flow of action, reaction and feedback – a matrix. The government acts, wise or unwisely, and the alternative political leadership responds. The government parries, the opposition thrusts, searching for the fault line. Media record and communicate action replay to people; people thread their reactions among each other and back to their respective political leaderships. The whole democratic process is meant to work intelligently only if each player in the circle listens intently and attentively to the other. The question is: How far have we traveled since Adult Suffrage, our own version of the Dark Ages? If only we were able to clear the bush: the denials, the distortions, the diversions, the noontime nuisances, in order to better debate the facts, we may very well be able to lift the level of the democratic dialogue. The truth is that here in Saint Lucia, backwardness coexists with insight gained from the powerful, modern tools of communications and human contact. It is the ease of our resignation to that co-existence that is so damned maddening.

Seven facts

The conversation starts with seven facts. The first is that Labour governed the country for almost ten years. The second is that Flambeau has been in charge for just over a year. The third fact is that Labour’s posture, conditioned by the possibility of a Flambeau implosion, is of a party that has not made the transition from governance to opposition, counterbalanced for sure by a party that itself has not yet made the transition from opposition to governance. This two-sided limbo partly explains the bemused expression on the face of the populace. The fourth is that while there is a de jure executive head of government, Flambeau political leadership is unsettled, even non-existent. The fifth fact is that the government is concentrating its efforts on a form of Flambeau political survival over full-fledged governance. The sixth is the aura of nationwide uncertainty hanging unabated over the administration, ever since the collapse and eventual death of the party’s leader, Sir John Compton. The seventh fact is the unending series of blunders and foul-ups that even the most robust and recalcitrant of Flambeau supporters have admitted to be a deep ravine of embarrassment.
How have the people responded to all of this? Well, the mood may have been captured in a sniveling, vicious little letter openly addressed to Labour Deputy Leader Philip J. Pierre, in which the letter writer just wants the people to be left alone to go about their business. What they did that day in December 2006 cannot be undone. “Mr. Pierre,” the sniper might have chuckled, hidden behind the customary nom de plume, “you would be much better off putting that fact in your pipe and………?”
The Vote, like First Communion, is a ritual Saint Lucians do not take lightly. They don’t care to overdo it. In 1987, John Compton pulled off a stunt that was bold, daring and desperate. He sent Saint Lucians back to the polls because he was dissatisfied with the margin of nine seats to eight voters gave him on 6 April. He needed a more emphatic mandate, he huffed. The voters gamely trudged back to the polling stations on 30 April and gave him the exact results of twenty-four days earlier.

The neitherland

Twenty years ago, the politics was raw, earnest, and sometimes naïve. Today, the eighties is strictly old school. The cultural landscape is dominated by the neitherland, a virtual reality country of 100,000 locals where the kwèyól is mixed with the ‘scont’ off Guyanese tongues and heated by the ‘me gusta muchachas que bailar’ of Santo Domingans in tight shorts. The temper of the place is felt on the roadways, seething with aggression, spitting bad manners. The neitherland has its own carnal rules, morals, hustles, street players, pastimes, linked in unflinching contact by one million Razrs and Blackberries, or so it seems. ‘Neithers’ are aware of what’s going on around them, that other life on the waterfront where other people bring their arms over. Here in the neitherland they bowl underarm. But the political shenanigans on the waterfront do not disturb their passions; do not arouse their outrage, their capacity for outrage pricked and bled daily by all those talk show needles strewn all over the place.
All Saint Lucians have become good at processing and storing away information until the next time comes along, whenever that next time. See how they bided their time after Menissa invited them to ‘bring it on’? Folks dwelling in the neitherland, you see, never rush time. The stuff they smoke helps to pass the time, if you get the drift. Yes, the neitherland goes about its business – hustling, surviving, multiplying.

On the waterfront

So we’ve mapped the matrix, we’ve laid out context. Let us now turn our attention to the applied economics taking place on the waterfront. Because for all the pretense, for all the studied indifference, the waterfront and the neitherland are tight. The waterfront collects the taxes and supplies identities, law and order, health care, schools, courthouses, roads, water, electricity, assistance to farmers, ports, and of course, all kinds of permits for cash. In exchange, the neitherland feels no guilt in commodifying its vote. In the neitherland any and everything is sold, and general elections are perfect for a warehouse clearance sale. The neitherland is the political plum. Win the neitherland and win the vote to govern.
But capturing the neitherland takes money. Containers of red envelopes. Enter the Taiwanese. They’d been John Compton allies from way back when. But having won on that fateful December night, he was then faced with the reality of reality. China is a colossal global presence. Even the USA salivates at the thought of the money to be made from doing business with two billion Chinese. He’d no doubt eyed the EC$104 million committed by China to Saint Lucia for specifically named projects. Indeed, his capital budget depended on it. He’d planned on stringing Taiwan along, as was his wont, but the Taiwanese, enlisting ruffian muscle, pressed hard for early payback on their investment. The revolving door drama unfolded. Enter Tucker, enter Chou; exit Tucker, exit Compton. (Next week –the conclusion)