ROUGH SEAS AND POOR "FLAMBEAU" COMPASS!

The battle between Chastanet and King for the Leadership of the UWP party has now reached crescendo proportions. The heat has gained unprecedented intensity and I get the impression that it may well be impacting on the “equilibrium” of the party.

Indeed, a seeming “massive disequilibrium” appears to have taken its biggest toll on the “convalescing” Bousquet who is also seemingly the victim of a serious “disorientation syndrome”.

After the Choiseul PowerHouse broke the news a few months ago, Bousquet hesitantly crept out of his shell and told the nation that he was suffering from advanced colon cancer.

The state of his health became an issue to him while he was on government business in the UK; he discovered that he had a serious constipation disorder and upon his return to St. Lucia he was finally diagnosed with colon cancer.

 

As part of his ongoing rehabilitation, he may still be carrying around with him a mobile chemotherapy kit strapped to his body; but true to his character, he has courageously defied any “odds” against him. He has not allowed his illness to undermine his unique and trademark political bravado – a bravado which he in another life, told me was partly derived from his inspiration from Louis Farrakhan, Bobby Seal and other “Black Power” heroes.

The latest demonstration of Bousquet’s bravado is his controversial pronouncement on the paramountcy of the Chairman of the UWP over the Party leader; but that wasn’t unexpected. He made a parallel statement about the Ministry for Foreign Affairs when he was foreign minister which suggested that this Ministry was the most important Government Ministry. He would probably echo the same for any Ministry he was put in charge of.

But we shouldn’t read too much into those charlatanistic pronouncements, except that they simply paint a picture of Bousquet's “cynic” egocentric power-play desires; and true to his misguided paradigm of Bousquet-centrism, he will always believe that he is the centre of gravity of the world where he dwells. Unfortunately, his view of himself is too heavily circumscribed by excessive charlatanism - for he has proven over time (and time and time again) that he rarely has the competencies to match his pronouncements.

Having said all of the above, it may also be appropriate to consider Bousquet’s pronouncement on the paramountcy of party chairmanship as perhaps only the small tip of broader “political-berg” which the potential to sink the Titanic UWP ship. Yes! It may well be a signal of an impending irretrievable disaster for the UWP.

Let me explain. There may be several evolving complex scenarios; but let’s narrow them down to one simple one in which Bousquet wins his bid for the Chairmanship of the party. In my humble view, that would be an irretrievable blow to the credibility of the party (and the SLP powerful political machinery must be licking its lips at that outcome!). Bousquet has demonstrated that his sense of loyalty is shaken and, therefore, irrespective of who wins UWP leadership, he will be a “Trojan Horse” to contend with. I suspect that, with the more vociferous and proactive Chastanet who always aims to “hit the ceiling”, any potential confrontation with him may turn out to be very abrasive and nasty. King, on the other hand, will more likely take his blows “lying down on the floor”!

It’s really a "bad time" for the UWP to be holding a convention! They are in the middle of extremely rough seas and they don't seem to have a proper compass! Will the winners at Sunday's convention discover or invent one?