Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

ST. LUCIA: New PM Rebuffs Cold War Politics

Peter Richards

CASTRIES, Dec 12 2006 (IPS) - St. Lucians stuffed their frustrations with the nine-year-old Kenny Anthony government into ballot boxes on Monday, electing an elderly hero of independence who has distanced himself from the United States and vowed to crack down on crime and political corruption.

John Compton, who returned to active politics after bowing out in 1996, signaled that he would refocus the country’s foreign policy, saying St. Lucia would no longer be “a cockroach in front of a fowl”.

It will be his seventh turn as prime minister; the 82-year-old Compton previously led the island for 29 years, from 1964 to 1979 and then from 1982 to 1996.

The prime minister-designate says his new administration will not break off diplomatic relations with China in favour of a return to Taiwan, as was the case when Anthony was swept into power in 1997.

Moreover, Compton has said that Castries would maintain its relationship with the Caribbean’s only socialist state, Cuba, complaining that the United States was still using the region to practice Cold War politics – a reference to the more than four-decades-old U.S. economic embargo.

“Our foreign policy cannot change with every government. A foreign policy must look at the interest of the country. A country has no friends – particularly small countries, you have to look at where your interest lies,” he said.


“I think we are getting ourselves too much involved and we are going to be swallowed up. You know there is the Caribbean statement that little cockroaches do not have any rights in fowl’s weddings – or if you want sharks and sardines, do not play in an area, especially when the shark is hungry.”

Since the 1961 book by former Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo, the phrase “shark and sardines” has been widely used as an analogy for economic and military imperialism, particularly as practiced by the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“As far as Cuba is concerned, we stood up as champions of the initiative to get Cuba to come back into the Inter-American system,” Compton noted. “I said and I repeat, the United States shed blood in Vietnam, they have made peace with every country including Vietnam, and yet they are still attacking Cuba and bringing their continued Cold War into our hemisphere. It is about time we speak out against these things and get Cuba to reincorporate into the system.”

Compton said that Havana, after the Grenadian experience of 1978-1993, when it was led by then left-wing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, “has not been involving itself in our business”.

“There is no evidence and therefore we cannot take sides with the United States when we think that their foreign policy is aimed at the continuation of the Cold War in our hemisphere. I don’t think we want it,” he added.

Compton has said that the island would continue to push for a stronger regional integration process, even as he acknowledged that not enough had been done to promote the CARICOM Single Market and Economy that allows for the free movement of goods, skills, services and labour across the region.

He also signaled to Ecuador that Castries would not sit idly by and allow it to destroy the vital banana industry through its challenges at the World Trade Organisation of the agreement reached with the European Union for the import of bananas from the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states.

However, he warned the 79 ACP countries, most of which are former European colonies, that the “honeymoon of protectionism is over and we have to adjust ourselves in production, shipping and marketing, otherwise we would not be in agriculture or anything at all”.

Compton is the oldest politician ever to be elected to office in the English-speaking Caribbean. He has brushed aside suggestions that he would not be up to the task of leading a government for the next five years.

“Age is not a factor here, I am not here running for the Olympics. Age is really in the state of mind, I am giving my experience and my intelligence that God gave to me. I am not going for a marathon, I am not going for the Olympics,” said the man who guided the island into associated statehood and then independence from Britain in 1978.

“St. Lucia was sliding and the people were not satisfied in the direction in which the country was going,” a jubilant Compton told IPS

The election campaigning was dominated by the state of the island’s economy, crime and allegations that drug barons had become involved in financing politics on the island.

Former tourism minister and deputy political leader of the defeated St. Lucia Labour Party, Phillip Pierre, conceded that despite five percent economic growth last year, Compton’s United Workers Party convinced voters that they had not benefited from that growth.

Compton says he has long argued that the island needs campaign finance reform laws. He criticised the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping, the Organisation of American States and the Carter Centre for not responding to an earlier communication about it..

He says that as prime minister, he will again raise the issue with his CARICOM colleagues.

Anthony, 57, who conceded defeat early on Monday night, had argued during the campaign that drug barons’ involvement in local politics was not confined to St. Lucia, and was “a problem throughout the Caribbean”.

“We are pretending that it does not exist. Just as you see there are interest groups who support political parties because they have agendas, so to you have persons connected to the drug trade who support particular political parties because they believe that those parties have certain positions on crime, “Anthony told IPS.

 
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