By G.A. Dwyer Astaphan
On Friday, 15th April, 2011, you, the people of St. Kitts & Nevis will have a glorious and historic opportunity.
An opportunity to usher in a bright new era of hope, orderliness, integrity and stability in this Federation. An opportunity to show that you will no longer tolerate the status quo under Denzil Douglas.
An opportunity to demonstrate your understanding that democracy is an everyday thing, not a once-every-five-years thing, and that it is developed and safeguarded not by governments but by the people.
Each and every single day! Especially when callousness and corruption, and mismanagement and lies infest the halls of power.
But it is more than an opportunity. It is a responsibility.
It is your responsibility to demonstrate that your best option is to participate in and support this Freedom March, rather than folding up in surrender and allowing Denzil to continue destroying this country.
But I know. Some of you are perhaps embarrassed.
I am referring here to some Labour supporters who know that Denzil has messed up big time. You might have been defending him stoutly in the past, until you started really getting stung by his incompetence and recklessness over the past year or so especially, and now that you have seen the folly of that, you want to see him replaced but you are embarrassed to admit that you were wrong.
Well, don’t worry about that. What is easier for you to take, a little embarrassment or the suffering and the deception and manipulation that you have experienced at Denzil’s hands? In any case, we will embrace you in the Freedom March as you free yourselves and your children from the clutches of Denzil.
Some of you are also afraid.
Afraid to lose your job with government, afraid to be kicked out of your NHC house if you are a few, or even a lot of, months in arrears. Or of not getting a scholarship for your child, or a piece of land. Or of losing a favour, or of offending Denzil Douglas in one way or another.
Let me ask you this: the things that he has been doing, and is doing, have they offended you? Has he hurt you in your hearts, your heads, and your pockets?
Are you or someone you know, or the country as a whole, suffering in any way as a result of action that Denzil has taken since the last election? Do you feel betrayed, let down, taken advantage of, and at the end of it all, terribly worse off for it? While you’re catching your tail to pay your lights bill, is Denzil paying for lights? While you keep bawling, as you have been for at least eight years now, about power outages and burnt out appliances, has Denzil suffered along with you?
The answers are obvious. So, why is it you are so concerned about offending him when he is doing so much damage to you, your family and your nation?
The man is kicking our backsides and some of us want to kiss his?!
Don’t you realize that you are more powerful than he is? Don’t you know that if anyone is to be afraid in this situation it has to be Denzil and not you?
And let me tell you this: he is afraid! He is afraid of you. He senses that you have just about run out of patience with him. Don’t mind the bombast and the belligerence. He is afraid.
He even now wants his colleagues to publicly condemn me. Men who fought in the political trenches with him, standing at his side to help make him Prime Minister. Yet over the years, he has continuously undermined, bypassed, marginalized and disrespected them, and his yard fowls have hurled all manner of abuse on them and their families.
Why does he want them to condemn me? Because he thinks that he can use and abuse people as he likes, because behind the bombast and belligerence is an insecure, little man who has an insatiable lust to have dominion over people, and because he is afraid of the momentum of support that is building up against him, both among the general public and within the Labour Party itself.
The supporters of those colleagues of his need to send a loud and clear message to him by making sure that they are in the Freedom March. This is the time to do so! And those colleagues need to speak out and tell the country that they support Integrity in Pubic Life legislation.
Let me take a moment and commend the Opposition for its initiative in trying to bring such legislation to Parliament. I hope that it will follow up with other bills relating to accountability, electoral arrangements, devolution of powers to Nevis, and so on. And let us all see this as yet another opportunity and responsibility to be in the Freedom March.
Denzil has to go! He is bad for the country. He has reversed virtually every dignified step taken by Bradshaw et al on behalf of the people. The place is a den of inequity, crookedness, and crime. A wild, wild West (with the wildness starting in Government Headquarters, particularly Denzil’s office and the Parliament) and a veritable cauldron of discontent.
The cloud of despair, fear and stagnation which hangs over our country and the perception from outside is very similar to that of 1993-1995 when Kittitians and Nevisians were hungry for fresh and improved leadership.
The key difference is that whereas back then the people, for the most part, wanted to see the back of PAM period, today the people would be comfortable with (and would even encourage and welcome) Sam Condor and Timothy Harris taking the lead roles in a new dispensation, even along with other Labour MPs, but definitely minus Douglas and his chameleons and imposters.
In 1993-1995, Denzil Douglas capitalized on the situation to propel himself into power, fooling many people, including myself, into believing that he was willing and able to deliver that fresh and improved leadership.
You will note that I emphasized “himself”, because as we have come to learn, Denzil had no interest whatsoever in propelling Labour to power. The entire Party machinery has been emasculated by him, and Party meetings and activities have long been a farce and an insult to democracy.
Indeed, since 3rd July, 1995, this has not been Labour in power. Instead, it has been Denzil (Ten-Man-in-One, Duvalier, Machiavelli , Nero, The Ruler, The High Priest, National-Debt-Me-Ass, Lex, Lad, Nothing-is-My-Fault) and his cabal of opportunistic chameleons and imposters.
So when the history of this era is written it will show that while Denzil Douglas defeated PAM four times consecutively at the polls, he did not succeed in destroying PAM.
But he may have, in effect, destroyed Labour.
Imagine that: a Labour leader who is expected to empower his Party, but instead debases, disembowels and degrades it. An utter shame and catastrophe!
This is one of the reasons more and more Labour supporters are saying that it is better for Labour if Denzil and his chameleons and imposters go now, rather than at the next election, because by that time it will be too late.
I hope to see them in the Freedom March. If they want to save Labour.
Because what is happening in this country is happening to nearly everybody, Labour, PAM, CCM and NRP alike. And Government employees and private sector employees alike. To big and small business. To the rich, and God have mercy, more so to the poor.
The few who have thus far escaped the wrath of Denzil’s mismanagement and mischief are those in and around his cabal, and those in his favour who get away with things and who live high off the hog. But perhaps future Commissions of Inquiry or even Court trials will be able to bring justice to what they might be doing. After all, just last week in Antigua & Barbuda, a former minister of government was convicted on a number of fraud charges in relation to that country’s medical Benefits Scheme.
The VAT (but no regulations yet some six months after the Act was passed), the Housing & Social Services Levy, the soaring cost of living, gas price hikes (and the cooking gas increases will come, if Denzil has his way), the wicked increases in electricity consumption, the downsizing and closures of businesses, the loss of jobs in both the public and private sectors, the financial strangulation of the citizens and businesses in this country, the electoral corruption, the disrespect for the Constitution and the law, the lawlessness generally, the lack of serious effort to curb crime from the social intervention and the criminal justice angles, the failure to develop the security forces in the way that they should be developed, the state of the roads and other infrastructure (even government buildings are literally falling to the ground, for example, the National Museum at Bay Road and the building just below Government Headquarters on Church Street), etc., etc.
It is NOT WORKING!
And we cannot take any more of it. Denzil has to go home!
Yet, look at how callous and ‘don’t care’ he is. He is still travelling like crazy, still hiring in the public service like crazy, and he recently used our money to the purchase a $280,000 car for him as PM and a $430,000.00 car for the Governor-General.
He has brought on the suffering, and while he tells us to tighten our belts and to work harder and pay our bills (or else), he is spending our money and telling us to go to hell!
I am calling on civil servants (teachers, nurses, Customs, professional personnel, security agencies, secretaries, clerks, all of you) and auxiliary workers and other employees of Government Corporations to join in the Freedom March. Denzil cannot fire you all. And he cannot victimize you any more than he has done already. It is time for you to fire him. Use your strength.
Private sector workers, you need to march too. I am calling on you to ask your employers to let you off an hour early, with pay. That is a good way for them to show their solidarity with this effort to send home Denzil. They too have nothing to fear. Indeed, they should be afraid at the thought of him sticking around.
I know some business people who will march, and I commend them for that!
Members of the clergy, members of other social partner organizations, you need to be in the Freedom March. Retirees, pensioners, and members of the Returning Nationals community, this is your march. Too many Returning Nationals are looking to go back to the cold northern climes because of your disappointment and suffering back here. March and help fix the problem. We want you all to stay here with us.
Students of the 5th Forms and the CFB, and other young people who are looking to further your academic and professional qualifications, and young people generally, both the employed and the jobless, you are called to march as well. The future is yours and you have to stand up for it.
Friday, 15th April, 2011 is to be an important day in the history of St. Kitts & Nevis. It is to go down as the day when this nation got together, across political lines, and stood for what was right and proper. And at the end of it, we will all say that it was good for Labour, good for PAM, good for CCM, good for NRP and good for the nation.
We gather from 3:00 p.m. at West Independence Square, for a 4:00 p.m. start. Make and bring your own placards. Say what you want to on them but no cussing, no abuse, no disrespect.
No political colours, please. And everybody must be on our best behaviour. Peaceful and purposeful. If you bring water, please dispose of empty containers in garbage bins. No littering, please.
If you are advanced in age, or for any other reason unable to march all the way or any of the way, feel free to drive or to have yourself driven in an automobile in the Freedom March. If you need assistance with this, call me at 662-4921.
Spread the word face to face, by phone, by text message, by BB, by email, by fax, or by any other method of communication available to you.
See you there.
