Features, Sounding Off

Tit for Tat Game Needs To Stop

Image of Rochelle Gonzales

I’VE been sitting on this topic for a while now because I know all too well how ferocious St. Lucians can be about their complacency and their archaic comfort zones that keep them in the Stone Age; however, like “Jesus’ Love”, it’s a bubbling over and yeah, I think I should speak my mind.

What I want to know is, why is it that the government, administration after administration, continues with this childish vendetta against people who did not vote for them?

Since returning to St. Lucia, I have seen the ruling administration go from UWP to SLP and back to UWP, and each time, the ruling party has acted like animals do when they urinate on certain spots to mark their territory.

I think it is absolutely appalling and disgusting that a person should lose their job simply because they were hired by the former administration.

Now I can fully understand if said person decides to actively try to sabotage the new administration (which honestly is the dumbest thing ever and anyone doing that should be tried for treason as they are not only sabotaging the island’s government, but the entire island), but when you take people like Dr. Anthony George and Shelton Daniel who were brazenly and unapologetically removed from their posts, even though they were doing stellar job, that is just beyond petty.

And this has been done by the SLP administration too, so they can’t even celebrate and think that I’m on their side.

The not-so-funny part of this situation is that every time I mention it, I get the very same shrug and dismissive smirk followed by, “But that’s how it has always been!” and “What can you do about it?” which indicates that attitude of acceptance of mediocrity (I’ve grown to really hate that word because of its sudden popularity in the mouths of every Tom, Dick and Harry) and injustice.

I would like to see a government being run by a body of professionals who are qualified and are simply perfect for the job of being part of the machine that runs my island home, but I guess this is just another pipe dream because at this rate, we are just doomed to hold our breaths until the next administration takes over and presses the reset button with a new crop of “selected officials” to scrap the work of their predecessor and commence new works of their own.

I swear we are living out a quinquennial Groundhog’s Day.

How are we expected to advance when every new administration, rather than push on and prosper as a nation, halts the progress of the ousted party and takes the island back to square one with their new ideas.

As my colleague Anthony De Beauville highlighted last week, the non-renewal of Dr. Anthony George’s contract as PS in the Ministry of Sports was an absolute travesty, because this man broke his back going all out and way above the call of duty to do right by the island’s athletes and sports on a whole.

Yet, his services were seemingly no longer needed because obviously, the state of sports in St. Lucia is on a supreme level, right? (I think the stench of sarcasm all over that one was strong enough)

Like I said, it was a travesty what they did to him because this is an obviously qualified individual who was passionate about sports and St. Lucian athletes love and respect him .

But, alas he was appointed by “the enemy” so there is no place for him in that sector.

Now you would think that this folly would remain within the government ministries…well, it branches out.

Just look at what happened to popular radio announcer and veteran journalist Shelton Daniel. His morning talk show “90 Minutes” was sensationally plucked off the air on Radio St. Lucia (which, ok, is actually a government entity itself but is still a part of the local media).

And the vendetta bars were raised even higher because Daniel was then slapped with an order from the Board of Directors stating that effective immediately, staff at RSL are precluded from work engagements or appearances on other media networks, i.e. radio, television and print.

Well I never! And they say that the media is never gagged and that we have this thing called freedom of press!

Many people might know that in the past, especially during the last elections, Daniel made it no secret that he was a supporter of the SLP; however, I guess political preference is enough to be your downfall in St. Lucia because not only could you lose your job, but you could be prevented from getting others, JUST because you didn’t vote for the ruling party.

And the worst part of this ordeal is that the persons making those decisions could not care less about the casualties of their waged war, just as long as they achieve their objective to search, find and be petty.

So now apart from Daniel, four others including local crooner Shayne Ross are left without their supplementary income all because of silly vengeance.

With this kind of injustice having free rein in our society, is it any wonder why we are seemingly going nowhere?

We are almost stagnant and in fact, the progress we make is going at the same pace as the plate tectonics in the earth’s crust (Google it), but like a pig in mud, the people love basking in it all…well at least it seems that way because no one is willing to do anything about it.

But hey, who am I kidding? I guess it’s like so many have said, it has always happened and will continue to happen, and so I feel safe in the knowledge that my words will simply be whispers in the wind.

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