LPM on Bosquet

The Chairman of the LPM says that Minister Rufus Bosquet?s statement about the luxuriating accommodations of the Foreign Ministry?s new offices in the Bay Walk Mall, coming at a time when many St. Lucians are still suffering from the ravages of Hurricane Tomas, reflects the sensitivities of a government that is totally out of sync with the plight of its people and a minister who civic consciousness seems completely divorced from the anguish and pain of the people of this country.

The chairman, Mr. Franklin McDonald, says that St. Lucians ought to get as mad as hell about Mr. Bosquet?s statement that, ?the Ministry needs an office that reflects its stature?, in his veiled attempt to justify the five million in rent-security Prime Minister Stephenson King paid out of the Consolidated Fund and the additional $114,000.00 in monthly rents it is going to pay out for years to come, when the victims of Tomas are still looking for a place to shelter their family and celebrate Christmas.

Mr. McDonald says that the country or the Foreign Ministry does not need an office to reflect its stature, it needs a Foreign Minister that reflects the character, uprightness and integrity of its people, and not one with a record for wrong doing in the United States who testified some years ago at the United Nations Commission of Inquiry held in St. Lucia that he falsified his application to get a United Nations job by stating that he had earned a degree when he did not.

Mr. McDonald says that St. Lucia is not only rotting at the head, with shameless and reckless government spending, but it is also rotting at the roots with forty-plus homicides in one year with a population of only 160,000.

What kind of government Mr. McDonald asks, that would, on one hand pay five million dollars of the people?s money in rent security for office space; but, on the other, stretch out its mendicant hand to take five thousand dollars for the Taiwanese government to help the people at the Marian Home, who have already made their contribution to this country and are now living out their twilight years.

Chairman McDonald says that Mr. Bosquet even went so far as to insult his workers and perhaps the ambassadors at the Ministry when he said that the Foreign Ministry has been used for too long as a ?dumping ground? for itinerant public servants and party loyalist.

Is he by any chance referring to Ambassadors H.Es. Brendon C. Browne, Dr. Jovita St. Marthe, Dr. Keith D. St. Aimee, Dr. Michael Louis, and or Consult General Stephen Julien among others as itinerant public servants or party loyalist. These men have served their country well and have earned the right and privilege to represent St. Lucia at the highest level, something one would be hard -pressed to say about Minister Bosquet