By: Fair Share For All
That Mark Brantley is the leader of the opposition is no surprise at all. He has the most seats of any of the losing parties so he would have jumped at this opportunity. And Mark is no fool. He knows that the leader of the opposition is a very important and powerful position. Perhaps underrated by many of us here in the federation but the leader of the opposition is nothing to sneeze at. Truth be told, he is the prime minister in waiting. That is why he is visited in his official capacity by everybody who makes it. All dat time he is given an office which is paid for by the government. He has staff which is paid for by the government. That is why we can’t take our eyes off Mark.
If Timothy was on good terms with Shawn and Mark, perhaps he would have been given the nod seeing that he had just been the prime minister. But he and everybody fall out, and after all the knockbout they said they got from him, Timothy wasn’t going to get another chance to knock them about again.
Shawn as leader of the opposition is a non starter. He had two opportunities to be prime minister and he turned them down. It’s because he went to Government House in 2020 to support Timothy when they had all agreed that there would be no 2nd Term Tim, why in fact there was a 2nd Term Tim. After that, it’s no way Mark was going to waste time to support Shawn in anything else. Common sense would suggest that anybody who has refused the position of prime minister not once but twice, cannot want to be the leader of the opposition. And as Mark also got the deputy speaker who is the opposition senator, our beloved prime minister would do well to honour the old adage of keeping his friends close and his enemies even closer.
All these positions are being filled because the first parliament of this new government will be held next week. All Labour supporters will want to be there. I hope that everyone who goes will be able to sit inside so no one will have to take to Facebook and buse because they had to sit outside and look at a big screen. Especially if someone who went Unity in 2015 and came back home in 2022 got a seat inside.
And that is why while I agree that “parson must christen dey pickney fus”, we in Labour must recognize that the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party would never have won in such spectacular fashion, if PAM supporters hadn’t voted for us as we had asked them to. And while I will agree that it is quite possible that they will not vote for us in 2027, if we treat them like lepers, they will definitely never vote for us again and they will campaign against us.
We in Labour must not fool ourselves. The 2022 election results were a rejection of Team Unity and the chaos into which they had plunged our nation. We in Labour promised real Unity. We promised to heal our country. But we have to hold on to our supporters who have been with us forever while we try to win friends and influence others from the other side. It will be difficult at best, but we have to do so if we want to be in power for longer than Akilah and Jonel.
We must never fool ourselves into believing that 2027 elections will be like those of 2022. And the electorate now knows that they are the ones with the power to vote in and vote out politicians and political parties. In 2020 Unity won six seats in St. Kitts. Two years later, they won two. The leadership of Labour has to be mindful of that fact every day. They have to be mindful of that fact in every decision that they make.
Because we are all human, mistakes will be made. Acknowledging and correcting them is also human. Labour is always hard on Labour. Labour is Labour’s toughest critic. That is why if our leaders made promises on the campaign trail then when they get into office they recognized that all the surplus that was being boasted about was barefaced lies, they should come out and tell the nation.
The SKNLP must continue to look after all of the foot soldiers. The lines of communication must always be maintained and kept open. The foot soldiers won’t defend if they feel ignored or used. Many problems are created unnecessarily because things are happening for some and not for others and nobody is saying anything to those others for whom nothing seems to be happening.
These teething problems are universal. Let us step back, take some long deep breaths and get back to our game plan. The truth is that the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party is the only party that brings real progress and real change. Let us continue to pray for our leaders and our party as we prayed when we wanted them to win.