During the PAM regime of the 1980s and 1990s, the physical ordering was reversed, and that is why today we have a situation in which ‘Cabinet’ is on a floor above that on which ‘parliament’ is located. We of this newspaper submit that the reversal was no accident, and that it was intended to send a loud, clear and powerful message that, as far as PAM is concerned, The Cabinet is ‘over’ the parliament.
Whenever they are confronted, those who encourage such deviations always respond with utterances such as: “Boy, is really about state power you know, and you have to understand state power and how to use it!”
The answer to which is: “No, not at all. It is ALWAYS about the ‘Power of The People’, and whenever you mess with it you may get away for a time, but eventually it will catch up with you, and, whenever it does, WOE BE UNTO YOU.”
Our people need to pay close attention to such matters, for they greatly influence the thinking and actions of those in power. Their actions affect all of us. It makes no sense to run up and down the place claiming that ‘the Westminster system’ does not work, therefore we need to change it.
As we have pointed out before politicians, the self-serving lackeys, sycophants and such others, can get away with those ‘antics’ ONLY if we the people allow them to. It has nothing to do with any ‘system’. Rather it has everything to do with us ‘the people’, namely what we will stand for, and what we will not stand for.
We began last week’s editorial by pointing out that ‘the conduct of the nation’s affairs in The National Assembly is once again a cause for much worry’. We must always remember and at all times be fully seized of the fact that parliament is the place for transacting the people’s business, and whenever there is any attempt to stifle the voices of one half of the assembly or, even worse, to silence those voices, then WE The PEOPLE need to assert our power, especially when those voices being stifled represent the vast majority of the people in the country. That is what really matters, and it is the only thing that politicians really understand.
The situation we now face is one in which parliament has been reduced to being a mere rubber stamp for the wishes of the executive. That executive speaks for the minority of people in the country.
After all the struggles through which we and our forebears have passed, after all the oppressions and abuse to which we were subjugated, after all the sufferings that we were made to endure, can WE THE PEOPLE of St .Kitts and Nevis really tolerate that which is being dished out to us by SCHEME UNITY?