I get along with a chap who is very well read, articulate, and, I thought, a person of social conscience and conviction.
In private, he expresses a very unflattering opinion of Denzil Douglas’ leadership, saying that Douglas has caused monumental damage and destruction to the country, to the Labour Party, and to the Labour Union.
But recently he has been publicly promoting and defending Douglas’ re-election effort. So, in my curiosity to get an explanation, I invited him to have a chat with me, and he agreed.
Our chat blew me away.
He assured me that he had not had a change of heart. Indeed, he said, his negative opinion of Douglas has only gotten worse.
But, he said, he needs the money.
He told me that he’d been contracted to write in the media and to go on radio and spread the Douglas propaganda. He named the person who is in charge of him, referring to him as “my handler”, and he described that person as “diabolical and totally without a conscience”.
He said that he has to pass his writings on to his handler, and sees them no more after that. Then his handler edits as he sees fit, and has the writings published under a pseudo name (which I know, but for my friend’s sake, I will hold back for now).
He said that Douglas has disgraced everything that is good about Labour and governance. And that there’s a diabolical look on Douglas’ face, even worse than that on the face of his handler.
Again I asked him how he could be doing what he’s doing while he felt how he felt. And again he said that the money was good, and that he was getting insights into people who he never imagined could be so bad.
He said that he might even write a book about this experience.
He said: “Dwyer, they pay me, I write, and I talk. I’m a political whore. I know it and I don’t really like it, but I’ve found that I’ve been able to live these two personalities that I’m living: the real me, and the political whore me”.
And he named others, both those residing in the Federation and those residing abroad, who provide their services for pay, anonymously or otherwise, in the commercial and social media. As he told me this, he made it clear that he didn’t know the names of all of these characters.
Then he claimed that in addition to cash received directly from whoever is their paymaster for services rendered, some of others were getting paid under the guise of SIDF business loans-even as high as $100,000.00-which are expected never to be repaid, especially given their notoriety as delinquent debtors.
He said that a few of the overseas characters are paid via certain corporate arrangements and overseas accounts, and via pie-in-the-sky promises from Basseterre. When he named a couple of them, I nearly choked.
He said that his handler and certain of his handler’s colleagues talk a lot, and that whether or not it’s him to whom they’re talking, he’s always willing to listen, if they let him. And that the odd piece of paper floating around in physical space or in cyberspace might fall into his line of sight, and he likes to read, if they let him.
So he learns a lot.
He told me that he gets paid by being provided with very comfortable accommodation, as well as a rental car, and a certain amount of money (he told me the amount) fortnightly.
He said: “Dwyer, I’m paid handsomely. I’m a happy political whore”.
His arrangement is short term, and is to end soon, having been made in anticipation of an election by November-December. Whether it will be renewed is left to be seen.
But of all the things that he said to me, this is the one that impacted me the most.
He said he hoped that his writing and talking would convince “not even one person to vote for Douglas or any of his candidates, because they’re all bad news”.
He said that, over the past three months especially, he’d been able to gain certain disturbing insights into the Douglas machinery and the personalities in it, and that he was disgusted by them all.
He said that while Douglas’ candidates are well drilled in what it is they are to say in the media, what they’re actually saying would make no sense to reasonable and self-respecting people. And that it is deliberately intended to dumb down people.
And he hoped that Unity would win the election.
I couldn’t resist asking him why he was taking their money if he felt that way. Why was he double-crossing them? He said that he wasn’t double-crossing them. He was simply hired help for unconscionable people. It was never part of the deal for him to believe them, or to believe in them.
That would’ve been a deal breaker from the start, he said.
But while his conscience was pricking him for being, to use his own description, “a political whore”, he still felt okay taking money from the Douglas effort so that he could feed his family, pick up a load of information, and gain insights for his possible book and for other future endeavors.
“They pay me, I write, and I talk”.
