BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE responsibilities of the electorate do not begin when the election bell has been rung and end after the final count, but extend through the life of the elected administration. This is the mentality that former Member of Parliament G. A. Dwyer Astaphan said his activist group Operation Rescue is endeavouring to engender in the minds of the people of St. Kitts-Nevis.
Just last week Friday (May 18), Operation Rescue held a march through the streets of Basseterre in protest of the high cost of electricity, the burden of which is being experienced by many residents of the island.
Following the march, Astaphan told this publication that the event – which preceded a rally – was an example of the duty of the electorate, whose duty is to constantly scrutinise those whom they have elected to serve, to ensure that they are indeed performing the tasks for which they were elected.
“One of the fundamental messages we want to get across to the people is that you cannot have a democracy if people believe that their responsibilities end on Election Day, because Election Day comes once every four or five years.
“On Election Day the people choose those who they wish to represent and serve them, but from the very moment those individuals are elected and sworn into office the people of the country have to scrutinise and monitor them with a wire brush every step of the way to ensure that the servants of the people behave as servants and behave as efficient servants.”
The former Constituency Number Two Representative explained that should the electorate be of the view that the elected fail to perform as they should, “then the people must exercise their power to remove them from office even before the election, not by any revolution or burning down a country or anything like that; but as coming together with the collective power to ensure that they get what they are supposed to get as an alert sophisticated and democratic-minded body politic.”
Astaphan made mention of recent examples of advanced democracies in the world where the body politic exercised its responsibilities even after Election Day.
“Indeed, in Europe in the last 18 months or so there have been 10 leadership changes. In London…30 000 police officers marched on the streets of London. A number of those police officers are supporters of the Cameron government. But they were not so much marching against anybody as they were marching for their interests. The government has declared it will lay off 16 000 British police officers in the next two years and begin a privatisation process of the police, and the police as a general body, as an interest group, said well, we are not pleased with that and we are expressing views.
“We’ve seen Margret Thatcher removed from office even without an election but the pressure of body politic. We saw the same thing happen to Bruce Golding. That is how democracy works and that is what we want our people to understand and to understand that their interests as a people are far more important than some of these loyalties that they pledge to leaders, especially leaders whose priorities are wrong and who are clearly incompetent and unsuited to lead.”
Astaphan – co-founder of Operation Rescue – said it is imperative that the people of St. Kitts-Nevis understand that their responsibilities are continuous.
“Your loyalty must be to you as a citizen and to your other citizens. That is what we are trying to get the people to understand, and that their responsibilities are a daily thing. Just like eating and bathing our skins and cleaning our homes and going to work, this is a daily exercise and a daily responsibility.”
