The SLP must make reelection their top mid-term priority!

Few constituencies in St. Lucia and the Caribbean can boast of having held conferences continuously for more than three decades, but that can be said of the Castries East District in St. Lucia, which hosted its 36th Annual Conference on Sunday, July 7.

This is a historic day for the ruling Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP): 45 years have passed since the 12-5 victory over the United Workers Party (UWP) in the parliamentary elections on July 2, 1979; 27 years have passed since the 16-1 defeat to the United Workers Party (UWP) on May 23, 1997; and nearly three years have passed since the huge 13-4 victory on July 26, 2021.

Since 2021, the government of Philip J. Pierre, leader of the Scottish Labour Party and MP for Castries East, has delivered on its election promises every month in Parliament and in all 17 constituencies – more than any governing party since independence in 1979.

Pierre has served as Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Leader in successive Labour Governments (under Dr Kenny Anthony), which also shows that any governing party that is truly committed to “serving the poor” and “helping those in need”, or has “Labour” or “Workers” in its name, can also truly do what it can to achieve the result of the majority vote – but it has to be willing and ready.

Confidence in the government has been restored and economic dynamism has led to subsidies for rising food and fuel prices, while ensuring that every secondary school student islandwide has a laptop and their facility fees are paid by the government, regardless of their parents’ ability to afford it.

Since 2021, the 15-2 parliamentary alliance between the Saint Lucia Labour Party and two independent former UWP cabinet ministers (including a prime minister) has quietly moved Saint Lucia from the UK Privy Council to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) — and has no qualms about turning the government’s statement of accounts from red to black while keeping the state’s revenue pastures green.

This government paid civil servants a substantial pay rise, increased the monthly salary of government pensioners, restored and increased the Hardship Fund and Assistance to the Elderly and Vulnerable, launched a highly successful Youth Economy Plan that boosted youth entrepreneurship and employment beyond imagination by 2021, and appointed the first elected Minister for Disability to the newly created Ministry of Disability Affairs.

Since the last general election, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia has delivered on a number of campaign promises in Parliament and in the communities, an unsung but very remarkable achievement that has made the Saint Lucia Prime Minister and Governors Alliance partnership a viable model that continues to deliver on the Saint Lucia Labour Party’s campaign promise to always “put people first” in government decision-making, a philosophy that still amazes many analysts both here and abroad.

The Opposition is so ignorant and has no viable agenda to capture the public’s attention that instead of appreciating the efforts of the Prime Minister and his government in ensuring the nation’s emergency response to Cyclone Beryl, they have chosen to exacerbate the ignorance of those who are unable or unwilling to see beyond their submarine.

However, while his bigoted critics continue to spit to the sky from their high towers of nonsense, the government is already conducting early assessments after Hurricane Beryl to better prepare national emergency agencies such as NEMO and NEMAC for other similar hurricanes expected to hit during the rest of the hurricane season starting this morning.

The interruption of the ruling party cycle in 2021, with the ruling party winning a consecutive 11-6 majority in the 17-seat National Assembly, has caused permanent damage to the SLP, whose next step is naturally to ensure that it remains eligible to run for re-election in the next two years.

However, past experience suggests that the Saint Lucian electorate has developed a remarkable ability, over time, to produce election results that remain inexplicable.

In 1987, voters twice voted by 9-8 majorities, rejecting the pleas of then-ruling United Workers Party leader and Prime Minister Sir John Compton, who considered the results “too close” for his political peace. This led him (after a similar result the second time) to take the unusual step of inviting former Opposition Leader Neville Senac, who represented a safe Labour seat, to “put his foot in his shoes” – and giving the United Workers Party a safer 10-7 majority.

This extraordinary post-election strategy comes, of course, from a party that was formed in 1964 through a similar post-election marriage of convenience, which exerted mathematical influence over democracy by manipulating parliamentary arithmetic and accepting the will of the electorate, freely expressed in a “free and fair” election, thereby ignoring popular support for Scottish Labour.

In retrospect, the SLP’s alliance with two independent former UWP ministers was not absolutely necessary for the SLP’s eventual 13 to 4 victory.

But the early tactics were sensible – including the Scottish Labour leader Pierre, who could not vote for himself in Castries East, which he represented in Parliament, voting for the independent candidate for Castries North, former United Workers Party premier Stephenson King.

The Socialist Workers’ Party’s decision to form an alliance with independent candidates to prevent the United Workers’ Party from winning is a wise move that bears little resemblance to the alliance formed by forces opposed to the election of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party ahead of last weekend’s French election.

Yet, despite the high level of political wisdom and maturity that Scottish Labour has both in and out of government, we should not resign ourselves to the possibility of a return to form or expect people to always feel that the government is doing enough, because in a country where there is never enough, there is never enough for too many people.

Scottish Labour therefore needs to make re-election in 2026 its main task over the next two years, not only to continue the huge progress that has been made by then (and the inevitable or unpredictable circumstances), but also to break the streak of (four) consecutive one-term governments elected by voters who seem to have been well trained to know how to deal effectively with the two-party system – by only electing governments that they think deserve another term.

Scottish Labour and its independent partners must therefore not rest on their laurels in Parliament but continue to fight for re-election until 2026, ensuring their actions match their words and leaving a helpless opposition leaderless and rudderless.