CASTRIES, St. Lucia – Prime Minister Phillip J Pierre has defended his stewardship of the island, two years after his St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) romped to a convicting victory in the July 2021 general election.
Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell addressing the St. Lucia Labour Party conference on Sunday (CMC photo)The party won 13 of the 17 seats in the Parliament with the then United Workers Party (UWP) government winning two seats. Two former UWP members, including a former prime minister Stephenson King, who contested the elections as independent candidates, have since joined the Pierre Cabinet.
Pierre, addressing supporters at the SLP’s annual delegates conference in Babonneau, north of here on Sunday, said the island had made a remarkable transformation from the ‘poison chalice’ it had inherited from the last administration.
“Our economy had contracted by 24.5 per cent, the largest decline in the OECS (nine-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) and the fifth worst decline in the world. And I want to tell you that COVID also affected the entire world and COVID affected St. Lucia also,” Pierre said.
He said the island’s debt was over four billion dollars (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) including payables of EC$174 million owed to local business people.
In addition, Pierre said that there was a lack of investor confidence and that within two years of being in office, the local economy had grown by 18 per cent in 2021 and 15 per cent last year.
“Tourism, agriculture and manufacturing, all our sectors grew,” Pierre said, adding that unemployment had been reduced to the lowest since 2010, including a ‘serious dent’ in youth unemployment.
Pierre said the policies of his administration had positively impacted people’s lives across all economic sectors under the ‘Putting the People First’ theme.
During his address, Pierre defended the 2.5 Health and Security Levy that the opposition says is an additional burden on St Lucians, already grappling with a rising cost of living, the adverse impact on the local business community, and the volatile global economic climate.
Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell, in his address to the delegates, said his National Democratic Congress (NDC) shared the same philosophy with the SLP of putting people first.
“That is a phrase that is common to us in Grenada and so I am extremely pleased that that phrase is also common to you, the St. Lucia Labour Party.
Mitchell, who led his NDC to victory in the general election last year, said that “putting people first” has been the hallmark of his conversation with Pierre,warning against complacency going forward.
He reminded the audience that the NDC because of infighting had been shut out of the Grenada parliament losing all the 15 seats on at least three occasions “and instead of learning from lessons and saying let us put our differences aside,let us come together for the people of Grenada, five years in opposition wasn’t enough, they continued the division, they continued the fighting.
“So when I say divided you will fall there is nothing worse for the population of our islands…they hate when they give men and women power…high office and instead of using the office for the benefit of the people they fight and squabble among themselves.
That is a lesson I know the St. Lucia Labour Party knows very well because your history says in 1979 and you won the elections after the country attained its independence from Britain. But in three years you had three prime ministers and so by 1982, you were in opposition until…1997,” said Mitchell, who is also an attorney.
“That;s an entire generation of St. Lucians who did not benefit from the administration of the St. Lucia Labour Party,” he added.
