From Caribbean News Now

CASTRIES, St Lucia — According to former member of parliament Richard Frederick, an unnamed member of the Cabinet recently brought an unsuccessful proposal to end live television coverage of parliamentary proceedings in Saint Lucia.

This follows a widely ridiculed performance by new prime minister Allen Chastanet last month, as leader of government business, in several clumsy attempts to introduce new legislation to the House, despite some sotto voce guidance by former prime minister Stephenson King.

In a subsequent press statement, the opposition St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) said that Chastanet demonstrated “absolute cluelessness as to how the prime minister and leader of government business is to execute that responsibility.”

Saint Lucian political commentator Melanius Alphonse noted, “What should have been the serious business of the Saint Lucia House of Assembly on August 16, 2016, descended into farce as former prime minister Stephenson King tried valiantly but in vain to guide his successor Allen Chastanet.”

During his weekly television show last Thursday, Frederick revealed that “someone in cabinet proposed that the live coverage of parliamentary proceedings be discontinued immediately”.

“Can you believe that?” he asked.

Frederick noted that, notwithstanding that there has been live coverage of parliamentary proceedings in Saint Lucia, whether by television or radio, from “time immemorial”, there was a move to cease the coverage with immediacy.

“I want to congratulate my former colleagues, the other parliamentarians, they vehemently opposed it and they disagreed.

“At the end of the day, this is the people’s business and the dispensation of the people’s business should take priority over everything else and I want to applaud them for taking that stand,” he said.

Frederick speculated that the reason for the proposed change was that “certain people” believe that they are so prone to making mistakes and not delivering effectively that they want to settle for a later publicised edited version.

Comments on social media largely supported Frederick’s position on the matter, namely, that Chastanet does not want the public “seeing him making a fool of himself” in a “mockery of the constitution and house rules”.

As one poster put it, “It is denying people their rights to information and that is a very dangerous precedent with serious implications for democracy.”

Another commentator noted that the business of parliament is not the business of cabinet. Cabinet is the executive branch of government, whereas rules and regulations governing the conduct of the House of Assembly are for the elected members of parliament to decide as the legislative body.

“What business has the cabinet interfering or attempting to decide how parliament business is conducted? So now non-elected members of the House of Assembly have a say in how business of the house of parliament is conducted?” the poster asked on Facebook.

In the meantime, the composition of parliament itself is under a constitutional cloud as a result of an ongoing failure to nominate and elect a deputy speaker as required by the constitution.

As noted by the SLP, Chastanet has “pointedly refused to appoint a deputy speaker of the House, a difficulty he has imposed on himself and the parliament, by appointing every elected member of his party to a ministerial position, thereby creating the largest Cabinet ever in this country’s history.”

Pursuant to the constitution of Saint Lucia, the office of deputy speaker was automatically vacated when the initial holder of that position in the current parliament, Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, was made a member of the Cabinet in July.

However, again pursuant to the constitution, her replacement may only be an elected member of parliament and all elected members of the governing United Workers Party (UWP) now have ministerial posts.

The alternative might have been for an SLP elected member of parliament to agree to stand for election as deputy speaker but, according to leader of the opposition, Philip J Pierre, that is not going to happen.

“The SLP is not interested in the post of deputy speaker,” he told Caribbean News Now by email.

IMAGE: chastanet_malfunctions.jpg
Prime Minister Allen Chastanet speaking in parliament on August 16, 2016. Image: YouTube “House of Parliament 20160816 Chastanet Malfunctions”

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