The National Integrity Party’s decision to forego participation in the upcoming election is of no surprise to anyone who paid attention to their presence on the political landscape of the federation of St. Kitts and Nevis over the past couple of years.
It is known that everyone in their membership, was a candidate on the People’s Action Movement’s slate that contested the last election in 2010. It is known that their departure from PAM was predicated upon, among other things, the Lindsay Grant incident at The Marriott, just days before Election Day in 2010.
I recall publishing an article on May 26th, 2010 (www.sknvibes.com/news/newsdetails.cfm/19009) and, within an hour of its appearance on website ofwww.sknvibes.com, as I sat at my desk in Ridgefield, New Jersey, I received a call from Roy Fleming who happened, as he said, to have “…found…” my number. His purpose was to set the record straight because, while the information I received had mentioned only himself and Glenroy Blanchette, he advised me of the involvement of Bernard Welsh, Junie “Scrape” Hodge and Louis Williams.
He further advised that, had PAM won the election, they would have, as a group, asked Lindsay Grant to step aside from being named/appointed Prime Minister. At that juncture, I charged them with hypocrisy. My reason was that, rather than give the impression that they were perfectly on board with Grant as the leader of the party going into the election, they ought to have jumped ship, even at that late hour. That, to me, would have been a more principled stance than the idea of making the planned demand, after the election.
In time, PAM and the former candidates for Constituencies 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7, parted ways. And, as all know, in time, Grant stepped down as party leader. However, while one thought that this would have been sufficient to displace the animus that nested in the bosoms of the former candidates, it did not.
Now, let’s fast-forward to the formation of the National Integrity Party. The mere fact of their formation classified them as an opposition party. The fact is, being formed during the tenure of a sitting government means that they were opposed to the government. However, that was to prove to be another instance in which SKN is genuinely unique. For the record, where NIP is concerned, neither Louis Williams nor Junie “Scrape” Hodge joined them.
NIP said all of the things that classified them as a party but they were unable to show by what means they were to have continued to be regarded as an opposition party. They failed to show any significant area(s) in which they differed with the government, regardless of the matter at hand. In fact, their most significant criticisms were reserved for the genuine Opposition. So, in essence, NIP, as an opposition party, was concerned primarily with opposing the Opposition.
They regularly participate in the forum provided by WINN FM’s “Inside the News” program on Saturdays, but they have never held a public meeting, something that any party that claims to aspire to place someone in parliament, does, as a means of getting out among the people who populate the highways and byways. It was very clear, for quite some time, that there was never any intention to participate in an election so, when they announced that they had opted not to nominate anyone on Friday February 6th, there was no surprise.
So, then, what was the purpose of NIP’s existence other than to have been a willing mouthpiece for the administration? What were they hoping to achieve by mounting this elaborate charade before the people of the federation? In fact, the more proper question ought to be, what did they ‘achieve’? One would have thought that they might have intended to split the PAM vote, such as Michael Powell’s UPP did in 1993, or even contest it with the possibility of being seen in the same light as Cowelby E H R (Cooper) Blake’s Kelsick& Wilkin Monopoly Breakers (KWMB) of the 1980s, but they did not even attempt the foray.
In my view, NIP was a terrible hoax.
