AT a time when the British public and United Kingdom citizens are mulling over London’s Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard) charging Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak — the two top leaders of the British government — for breaking COVID rules they set for the public in 2020 and 2021, Saint Lucia’s courts are busy jailing top politicians who bring public offices into disrepute.
The moral bankruptcy of leadership of Saint Lucia’s opposition United Workers Party (UWP) continues to unfold, with a second former Opposition Leader jailed earlier this week for actions unbefitting of parliamentary political leaders – and a third awaiting his day in court.
On Monday (April 12), High Court Judge Justice Clarence Thompson sentenced former UWP Opposition Leader, Marcus Nicholas, to six months imprisonment for tax fraud by way of “Uttering or Using False Documents for Tax Purposes.”
The case dates five years back to 2017, when Nicholas was charged with making false representation for a tax return payment in his un-named girlfriend’s name — and also signing the letter in her name.
Nicholas admitted to the court that he’d acted fraudulently, took responsibility and claimed he was “sorry that I put the court and the country in this position…”
But the judge told him he should have known better and sentenced him to six months at the Borderlais Correctional Facility (BCF).
Nicholas, who won elections to represent Dennery North in 2001 and 2006, is the second former Opposition Leader to be jailed for actions bringing the office into serious disrepute.
On November 9, 2021, Marius Wilson, former MP for Micoud North, was sentenced to five years imprisonment at the same BCF, for a shooting incident nine years earlier (on June 7, 2012), when he used his licensed firearm to shoot a man in a public space.
Wilson was twice convicted for the act, with two sentences of four and five years, running concurrently.
Nicholas and Wilson’s jail sentences have also deepened public interest in the fact that the island’s current Opposition Leader is also being prosecuted for another charge involving the public purse.
Former Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Allen Chastanet, now Opposition leader, is being prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Department for a 2011 Election-related offense of using public finances to fund a performance by a popular Jamaican band to appear on his party’s platform during his unsuccessful campaign to unseat then Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) MP Harold Dalson in the Soufriere-Fond St Jacques seat.
According to the charge, Chastanet, who, as UWP Leader, did not hold a seat in the House of Assembly, paid the popular Jamaican band ‘Third World’ EC $ 38,000 fee, but from public funds.
During the SLP administration of 2011-2016, the AG’s Office filed charges against Chastanet to recover the $38,000, but the case dragged-on and never saw the light of day during his government’s five-year term.
Chastanet led the UWP to victory five years later in 2016 — and soon after he took office as Prime Minister, the AG’s Office stopped prosecuting the case.
The UWP lost the July 2021 General Elections and last month the AG’s Department revived and revisited the outstanding case in pursuit of the outstanding public funds.
Chastanet hasn’t denied the charge of Malfeasance in Public Office, and last month admitted he had indeed interfered with the course of justice by informing the Attorney General that he (as Prime Minister and Finance Minister) would not commit any more public funds to the department for pursuing the case against him.
Chastanet told reporters he’d told the AG that since the cost of pursuing him had reached almost $250,000 he would not spend one cent more in pursuit of the smaller $38,000.
However, while Chastanet argued that it didn’t make financial sense to spend more money pursuing less, the AG’s Office reinstated the case.
As a result, the current UWP Opposition Leader, like his two predecessors, will also have his day in court.
As in most two-party societies, UWP supporters are either quiet about the disrepute brought to the island’s major opposition party, while Chastanet continues to behave like nothing happened.
Instead on Monday, Chastanet issued a public statement accusing the governing SLP of failing to protect citizens and consumers against increasing costs of fuel, cooking gas and food.
Chastanet falsely claimed that the government was earning “over $100 million monthly”, $40 Million more than was available during his previous administration.
But the government has pointed out that far from that, the Finance Ministry is losing one million dollars annually as a result of subsidising 20-pound cooking gas cylinders to protect average consumers, while actual increases have been allowed on 100-gallon cylinders used by persons better able to afford.
Fuel prices for public transport have been increased by one dollar in the past two months, taking the current price from $14.954 per gallon to $15.95.
Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Philip J. Pierre, said his administration will continue to shield consumers as much as possibly, but has also warned that the unending war in Ukraine will continue to cause price increases as a result of its effect on energy prices, as well as the continuing global Supply Chain problems that will also cause continuing increases in food prices.
Indeed, the National Committee on Public Transport (NCOPT), which represents the island’s minibus owners are pressing the government for a fare increase, with Transport Minister Stephenson King indicating that, from all indication, the owners and drivers are not interested in other incentives offered.
“A bus fare increase seems definitely on the horizon,” King said earlier this week, pointing out that the minibus operators last requested a fare increase in 2015, which was not granted.
But try telling that to Chastanet and the UWP, who continue to pretend that the Ukraine war, Supply Chain problems and COVID-19 never happened.