Let Us All Act To Restore Goodwill And Democracy
On a number of occasions, we have drawn to your attention the nature of the
regime now holding power in our country and warned you, our people, that all is
very far from being well with us. It is also the case that, like wise, all is
very far from being well with them, but more about that later.
Many of them would like to act honourably at all times and in all things, but
they took another wrong turn when they allied themselves with certain creatures
of evil.
From time to time, we have also reminded you of the propensity of several for
indulging in any and all manner of evil practices in order to retain their grip
on power.
We have drawn to your attention the shenanigans being carried on at the
electoral officeand, in particular, the quite obvious attempts being made to
disenfranchise large numbers of our people, both at home and abroad, but, very
noticeably, only those who support Labour and The Nevis Reformation Party (NRP).
You will recall, dear readers, that a few weeks ago we warned you thus: “The
reality is that, effectively, democracy in St. Kitts and Nevis is a dead entity,
seemingly a thing of the past”.
Many were of the opinion that we were too strong in our assessment and
description of the situation. Now the picture is becoming clearer and more in
focus, and, with the recent introduction in parliament of the bill to amend the
National Assembly Act, it is very clear that, having killed off democracy, they
are now attempting to proceed with its ‘funeral and burial’.
Question: “Are we, the people, going to sit back and tolerate such devilry?”
As we discern they are attempting to proceed as they have planned because some
of them are of the view that the people of St. Kitts are ‘fraidy fraidy’ and
‘wishy washy moutahbassies’.
In our opinion, it would be prudent of them to think again.
All over the years, we have seen this pattern of behaviour on the part of ‘PAM’
in particular. When Labour defeated them, election after election, they always
sought refuge in blaming ‘the system’, and claiming that everything was wrong
about how elections were conducted, from the registration of voters to the
counting of the ballots, everything was wrong.
For the time that they became a party in 1965 one of the pet complaints of some
of their leaders was that our people living overseas were being disenfranchised
and that was why they were losing election after election. From the moment that
they succeeded in getting their hands on the levers of power (which became
possible only because of treachery within the Labour party) they quickly lowered
the voting age from 21 to 18, and allowed Kittitians and Nevisians abroad to
take part in our elections, no matter how long they had resided elsewhere.
Thousands had never been back to St. Kitts or Nevis in decades.
It worked to their advantage in 1984, so well in fact that they were able to
effectively discard their coalition partners of 1980/84 and subject them to some
serious humiliation, not without some justification we might add, taking into
account the many instances in which two of the founding members of The NRP
inflicted some seriously damaging ‘blows’ on the PAM faction of that coalition,
but more about that another time.
The new arrangements also seemed to have worked well for them in 1989. But, by
1993 it became clear that it was no longer to their advantage, and suddenly they
began to make excuses and find all kinds of problems and faults with the very
arrangements which they themselves had put in place.
What was particularly irksome and galling to them was the fact that the
thousands of Labour supporters who they had victimised and chased out of
St.Kitts were by then coming home to vote in our general elections, and it
haunted them to the point that they have been complaining, over and over, that
everything is wrong with ‘the system’.
Within recent times, one of the most noticeable complainers in that regard has
been Mr. Eugene Hamilton, but they and many of their supporters have been also
making a great song and dance about how terrible ‘the system’ is, how unfair it
is, and calling for it to be done away with.
But, dear people of St. Kitts and Nevis, the intended doing away with overseas
voting by elements of the SCHEME UNITY lot will only be applicable to the
supporters of Labour and The NRP. We know those persons very well indeed, and we
