SCHEME UNITY Strikes Again

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In our editorial of Friday 10 March 2017 (Vol 59 No 41) we warned you, the people of St. Kitts and Nevis, that ‘Democracy Dies In Darkness’. We issued that warning, and reminder, because of the growing tendency of those in government to indulge in all manner of practices while trying to conceal them from your scrutiny, as well as their constant attempts to control the press and tell you, the people, who and what you should listen to, and who and what you should NOT listen to at all.

At the risk of seeming repetitious, we reproduce one of the several warnings which we gave to you back then: “At this time one of the many concerns which weighs most heavily on the minds of our people is the naked attempts being made to silence all opposition in this nation. People are now being told what they should listen to and what they should not. Information is being artlessly withheld from the press, by the very same persons who previously shouted most loudly that we need ‘freedom of information act’.”

We clinched those aspects of our warnings with the caution that “The attempts to silence our people and the press is a most vicious and dangerous attack on one of the pillars of our democracy.”

Today that is still the case, but it has worsened and become even more worrying.

Earlier in this week our Comrade Leader found himself constrained to alert the nation to the fact that a matter with far reaching consequences had been undertaken by the government and was being deliberately withheld from the public.

What has come to light is the fact that His Excellency The Governor General issued a special proclamation sometime during the third week in the month of May, in which he had vested in members of the Defence Force the powers of the police.

There are any number of things wrong with the whole matter, none the least of which is the manner in which those in the government have gone about it.