BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 5th February 2021)-With placards featuring more than 100 words combined, well-known political and social activist Duncan ‘Big Lice’ Wattley recently took to the street to protest by himself and intends on doing so at least once monthly to address claims concerning governance under the Team Unity administration now in its second term.
This media recently interviewed the one-man protester going about the sidewalk outside Government Headquarters on Church Street on Friday 29th January 2021 and quizzed him about the purpose of the outing.
“Well if you read the posters you’ll see what it says…I’m marching for and against certain things like for instance [for], good governance, transparency, accountability …We still don’t know about the SIDF (Sugar Industry Diversification Fund] money, we still don’t know about a lot of things and these are things we campaigned on that we will change but there is no change. The change remains the same so I would come and demonstrate as often as possible once a month maybe just to get the word around and I don’t need no crowd.”
Wattley pointed out that he made the announcement about plans for his “one-man march” about one month ago during a live session on social media network Facebook.
“[It’s a] one man march, one man demonstration. If five people see it that’s good enough for me.”
That day, he carried a hand-held placard with mirrored words back and front and also wore a body placard with listed areas “MARCHING FOR” at the front and “MARCHING AGAINST” at the back.
“A lot of wording… so that’s why I come so early so that people could take their time and read,” he said to this reporter.
Asked what he is hoping for with his choice to demonstrate, he had this to say: “That people become aware because I think we are too complacent; we just take it for granted that this is that. We had a few values that we wanted in our political system and people decided let’s give [Team] Unity a try but all I’m saying is that I believe that Unity is failing us in regard to bringing the change that we wanted to see so we going down the same road, and I mean when it going change? We need some change in terms of our political [system]…”
Commenting on the words on his t-shirt “WE DID NOT VOTE FOR THAT!!!”, the calypsonian shared: “That was a song I did about three years ago” to which he added “so it’s long time I’ve been having this process in place to say let us start to speak about what is necessary to bring about change and so I promised that I would come today, and you see it’s me and you see it’s me alone because I don’t want anybody to say me incite anybody to come with me …I mean this is COVID times so.”
When questioned about others joining him, Wattley stated “They could come but all I’m saying is that the laws are funny and I don’t want to compromise anything. I just want people to be aware of certain things.”