BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, JANUARY 15TH 2015 (CUOPM) – There is no entity in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis registered as a Unity Party or Team Unity.
“NONE! It is a mirage. It is a farce. It is an attempt to hoodwink the people of St. Kitts and Nevis. If they were really united as they say, why don’t they do like Trinidad and Tobago where two different parties came together and created a new movement. This has not been done here,” said St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister the Right Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas in response to a caller to his weekly radio call-in programme “Ask the Prime Minister” on Tuesday.
He pointed to continuing bickering and disunity behind the scenes of the three parties – the People’s Action Movement (PAM) of Hon. Shawn K. Richards; the Concerned Citizens (CCM) of the Hon. Vance W. Amory and the People’s Labour Party (PLP) of Dr. the Hon. Timothy S. Harris.
“They have come together to do one thing. ‘Oust Dr. Douglas’ and get rid of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party,” responded Prime Minister Douglas.
He said the opposition does not really care what good the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party has done or what the government has done.
“Just get rid of it, because Douglas is its leader, because the man who is challenging the Labour Party for leadership of the Labour Party cannot beat Douglas (on the conference floor), so just get rid of the government and you get rid of Douglas,” Prime Minister Douglas told listeners.
Dr. Douglas told listeners that within the democratic statutes of the Nation and the Party his name was placed in nomination for positions and he has been successful.
“The point is (Dr. Harris) and others are unable to do what is democratically right in order to satisfy their insatiable desires and appetite for power. And so just mash up the Labour Party and having failed to mash up the Labour Party, they said ‘well let us mash up PAM instead and take over and use it as a footstool to get into political power,” said Prime Minister Douglas.
“That is the reason why parties that call themselves part of the concoction, they are not together. They are afraid to create a united force, a united party to go into the General Elections and that is why you are going to have three parties,” said Dr. Douglas.
“They are not together; one of them is PAM, one of them is PLP and the other is going to be CCM. Each having its own Leader going into the elections, each having its own symbol which is what they are asking the people to vote for, not Unity, because there is really no unity as the caller just said,” Dr. Douglas pointed out.
“It is power hungry Harris trying as much as possible to upstage little power hungry Lindsay Grant and also you have of course, Shawn Richards who has been discarded by PAM because they say he is a waste of time as a Leader. He cannot bring any political benefits so they discarded him. So they discarded Shawn Richards and replaced both of them by Harris who is trying his best to get to become Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis,” said the Prime Minister, who suggested that a vote to put the opposition in government has severe consequences.
“Each is going to fight for the leadership of our country and what is going to happen as a result? The country will move down under them from the lofty positions and the achievements it has made under the Labour Administration. There will be instability. The country will become unstable and the enormous benefits, economic activities and economic benefits that are being accrued today from the policies of our government will all disappear,” said the four-term prime minister.
“Businessmen will find that their profit margins would have become totally eroded. There will not be any stability in the country, profits will disappear, life will get hard, our people will become secondary to Harris and his boys fighting for the leadership of our country. So I think that the caller is right. There is really no unity. It is a farce. It is a mirage. It does not exist. It is designed to fool people, but our people must not be fooled,” said Prime Minister Douglas.