Helligar, thrown out of the MJP turns to New Direction
MARIGOT (soualigapost.com) – Raymond Helligar, co-founder of the Movement for Justice and prosperity (MJP) left the movement to join Jeanne Vanterpool’s list.
On February 10, Louis Mussington unveiled the name of those standing by his side on the MJP-list; among them was Raymond Helligar. Three weeks later, the night before the lists were filed at the préfecture, his name was excluded from the list. According to the party, Helligar was “too old.” He is 68.
“The leader of the MJP has now only one obsession, which has been the same for twenty years and is even more pronounced today: win, be president,” Helligar says, repeating three times “win, be president” to members of the media that he summoned last week. “And for him, to guarantee a win, a specialist advised him in secret to form a younger list. But he confused the idea of a younger list with firing the old, and the only old man that he found… who do you think that is?” he continued, without naming the name of the specialist involved.
Helligar wondered: “Since when is ageing ugly? Since when does ageing take you away from serenity, from a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty, a sense of respect for others?” To prove otherwise, he cited as an example the experience of Lucette Michaud-Chevry: “If the maturity, longevity and experience of Ms Lucette Michaud-Chevry – the current President of the urban community of Basse-Terre – are a mark of success for Guadeloupe, why wouldn’t they be for the construction and success of Saint-Martin as well?”
A co-founder of the MJP, he also asked if the party has become just like those companies with no soul and no heart, who do not like the old. “I saw that the movement as it exists is no longer the tool for transforming Saint-Martin society that I was hoping for,” Helligar says; his ambition is to “fight an order established by a small group, which increases inequality and weakens and divides Saint-Martin society a little more every day.”
Shortly after he was excluded from the list of the MJP and a few hours from the filing deadline for lists in the prefecture, Helligar found comfort from Jeanne Vanterpool, the leader of New Direction. “I decided to go and build the Saint-Martin that we want and participate as much as I can in preparing a true and real alternative to the political path that the MJP leader has decided to take,” he says. And added about Jeanne Vanterpool: “She was politically savvy in naming her list New Direction and not New Generation.”
Facing reporters, Helligar also confessed to a second, more political, reason for his departure from the MJP list. Louis Mussington would not have given him an “eligible place,” meaning that he had not placed him in the top ten of the list. But Helligar wants to act and to be elected.
Photo caption: Raymond Helligar was thrown out of Louis Mussington’s MJP party. Photo soulaigapost.com
