Careful you bite your tongue Cindy
By Sotto Voce
Is PAM keeping down women?
As I listened to last Saturday’s edition of “Inside the News” over WIIN FM hosted by Rev. Father Alrick Francis, there was a caller to the programme who identified herself as Cindy Demming who openly blamed the Labour Government for the absence of women in our parliament. Bearing in mind that Saturday was International Women’s Day, it gave the programme and its panellists the opportunity to focus on women in St. Kitts & Nevis. They didn’t do so.
In truth, that programme has degenerated into a political talk show and an extension of the “political voices” programme heard on that station Mondays through Fridays weekly. The same persons with political axes to grind are again at it on Saturdays after spewing the same venom on weekdays.
The lady caller is an executive member of PAM. So to her, Labour is to blame if no parliamentarian has a woman in St. Kitts. You mean that too is a political issue? In the last general election in 2004, Labour put up one female candidate in Sandy Point, PAM put a female candidate in Newton Ground- Saddlers, and UNEP put up a female candidate in East Basseterre. All three lost their bids.
We have had females (not in abundance) in our parliament both in St. Kitts & Nevis over the years. It is not an area of business that our women have preferred in the past or the present. So how Labour is to blame for that?
While we can boast of rapidly increasing numbers of our women going into the practice of law, and medicine, and agriculture, and architecture, and small businesses not many are attracted to politics.
In fact, the nature and practice of politics in St. Kitts & Nevis has not endeared our women into wanting to be candidates. They prefer to take positions in parliament which do not compel them to stand as candidates.
We have had candidates in recent times from all the political parties in St. Kitts & Nevis. Consie Mitcham won twice and opted out when the writing was on the wall. Jacinth Henry-Martin won once and then lost on her re-election bid.
Jean Harris of the C.C.M has been successful to date winning three or four times in a row.
We have had women sitting in parliament as nominated members or as Speakers or Presidents in St. Kitts & Nevis.
But it cannot be doubted that Labour has done more for the progress, advancement and development of women in St. Kitts & Nevis than PAM. So dear Cindy Demming was barking up the wrong tree. Our comprehensive education system, introduced in 1966, that made all subject areas available to women in schools and colleges was the starting point.
Labour’s all-inclusive student loan scheme through the development bank that allows all applicants, man and woman; PAM, Labour, UNEP, C.C.M and NRP; to be able to source funding to go to any university for a degree, is solid. Before 1995, opportunities for poor people’s children to get further education after high school, was limited to PAM supporters. Not so now. Everyone can benefit.
Our Ministry of Gender Affairs does a lot of excellent work promoting our women and caring for elderly women. Ministry of Housing gives a roof over their heads.
We have had women like the late Ada Mae Edwards and Eugenie Byron- Condor (who served as a nominated the first female Speaker in the federation). We have had a prominent woman, in the late Anne Liburd who did marvellous work in promoting St. Kitts & Nevis all over the world through her involvement in CARIWA (the Caribbean Women’s Association).
So labour has been in the forefront of pushing our women to higher levels in St. Kitts & Nevis.
What has PAM been doing?
The PAM mouthpiece, the Democrat newspaper, has been busy trying to embarrass and humiliate any woman who does not support PAM.
The same Anne Liburd, whose only “crime” seems to have been that she supported Labour, was hounded down like an animal week after week in that newspaper for years. They referred to her as “lucky Anne” and “lucky cow”. They had pictures drawn of a cow with one breast, obviously taunting her for the fact of her mastectomy operation due to breast cancer.
She was told “Antiguan go home”. Her marriage to a Nevisian since1944 during the days when Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, Anguilla, Dominica and St. Kitts formed one presidency in the Leeward with one Governor meant nothing. She did not support PAM. So that was to be her lot as a woman in St. Kitts.
Jean Byron-Condor was referred to as “The mace thief” when she sat in parliament as a nominated member of Labour. As a woman who did not support PAM, that was her lot, as she came under weekly attacks in their newspaper (the Democrat).
But that was then. Have they changed now? Not at all! They now are focusing on Marcella Liburd, the present speaker in parliament who is to step down. For several weeks now, the Democrat has gone into attack mode. This is a woman of high intellectual capacity who reached where she is in spite of PAM.
She was a netball hero; played on the CNA Netball Championship St. Kitts teams of 1973 and 1978; earned the most attacking-player award. She taught at high schools in Basseterre, Sandy Point and Cayon under PAM. She was around because PAM had a problem. They feared her personal influence on girls in school because of her popularity in Netball. So she was transferred from Basseterre to Sandy Point; then from Sandy Point to Cayon. They didn’t know where to place here.
Then, I am told, after several years of teaching, she wanted to pursue law in government service. She applied for study-leave with pay, and was refused. Then she applied for study-leave without pay, and this too was refused. She was told that she would have to resign. That is how Netball icons who don’t openly support PAM are treated.
So she resigned. She went and pursued her studies and returned; then joined the law firm of her older brothers, Bryant & Liburd.
She is very pleasant and personable. She has friends and family of different political persuasions. They respect each other’s choices as human beings.
But can she get into politics on Labour’s side as the daughter of Anne Liburd and sister of Fitzroy Bryant; can she escape the wrath of PAM? Check out the last several issues of PAM’s newspaper and find out. She has been branded “Mama Rearbin”. All sorts of negative and potentially libellous things are being published about her.
Would you believe that the last editor and the present editor of that newspaper are women? Are there women among us who would condone such distasteful, degrading and nasty, comments about St. Kitts women?
Can PAM be heard in one breath to be supportive of women, and then promoting such filthy attacks on our prominent women?
Cindy Demming will need to get her party to clean up its act if International Women’s Day is to have meaning in St. Kitts to all of us. Nice words on a radio programme must have support by deeds and actions in other areas.
NOTE: The above does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Communications Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister (CUOPM). It is however circulated to assist in the ongoing social, political, cultural and economic discussion.
