BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - FROM the inception of elections in the Federation, the St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party has always been victorious in Constituency Number Six, and most individuals expect history to repeat itself during the upcoming General Elections. However, Leader of the Unity Movement the Hon. Dr. Timothy Harris believes that that Constituency might be “the surprise” of the elections.
Team Unity - which consists of members of the Concerned Citizens Movement in Nevis, the People’s Labour Party and the People’s Action Movement on St. Kitts - has repeatedly said it is fully prepared for the General Elections whenever they are called.
However, having promised that it would contest the elections with a full slate of 11 candidates, the Team is short of one.
SKNVibes spoke with Dr. Harris and asked if Team Unity has conceded this seat and he answered in the negative. He informed that preliminary and other groundwork have already been done in that constituency and it is expected that the SKNLP would face a competitive campaign from Team Unity.
“Already we have teams of people who are at work in Number Six. We had a candidate who was identified and who is in the civil service and, therefore, at the particular moment we would not come forward. We are addressing that practical difficulty and we have a number of other personalities who we are looking for to provide the leadership of that constituency....
“I myself have been in Number Six. My constituency borders it and we have identified a number of persons who are managing the list. We have a sense of what the arithmetics look like, we have a sense of what the issues look like and that is why we went there. If we had conceded it we would not have gone there with the town hall meeting. We went there and we made the case.”
Because of the difficulty, Dr. Harris explained that there are other “options” available to them and in a couple of months the selected candidate to Prime Minister and Leader of the SKNLP, the Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas, would be announced.
Making reference to the recently-held Antigua and Barbuda General Elections, Dr. Harris intonated there is demand for new representation in Constituency Number Six.
“As you see what happened in Antigua. Prime Minister Baldwin’s seat...when the pollster say there were rumblings, a lot of people said ‘no’. On election day, Baldwin scrape home. And we are having significant demand for a new representative in Number Six and Number Six may well be the surprise for this upcoming General Elections.”
According to statements made in the past by members of the People’s Action Movement, the candidate for Constituency Number Six has been referred to as the “V Man”.
