BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MANY prominent citizens and local NGOs have been voicing their disapproval of the machinations perpetrated by the Dr. Denzil Douglas-led Government in St. Kitts and Nevis, and the most recent of them is Dr. Thelma Phillip-Browne.
Dr. Phillip-Browne, the first registered female doctor in the Federation and a ‘Messenger of Christ’, is the wife of one of the country’s revered legal luminaries, Dr. Henry Stugumber Browne, who has been representing the Labour Party Government in almost all of the cases brought against it by the Opposition.
Speaking at a recently held Team Unity rally in Ottley’s, Dr. Phillip-Browne told the large gathering and those who had tuned in to WINN FM 98.9 as well as others on the Internet that she has been preaching against polarisation in the Federation for some three decades.
“Barrack Obama said: ‘The fierce urgency of now...this is a time we have to consider the fierce urgency of now. It is now or never!’ Like all of you here, I love my country! For over 30 years I have been preaching about how polarisation have been destroying this country; not only within the country but across the waters.”
The doctor spoke of two recent experiences that caused her to almost be ashamed of being a Kittitian.
The first, she said, occurred some weeks ago when she overheard a lady at the desk of American Airlines woefully saying that she would like to go to Canada but she could not because Kittitians and Nevisians are no longer accepted there without a visa.
“And I felt so low because I had not done anything, but I was treated as if I am some criminal while the real criminals are masquerading as politicians, as leaders and as a government,” she added.
“The second time was today (Feb. 6). Yesterday a decision was made and it is only today when I heard Hamel-Smith saying: ‘The Court said that it was really a matter of political morality, but the Court don’t deal with that,’” Dr. Phillip-Browne said of her other experience, adding: “So it is up to us to decide whether we gonna continue to accept political immorality.
“I know that you don’t accept it and you are here because you don’t accept it. But I say to you in Canada, if you insist on coming and putting a government that has been called politically immoral in essence, led by a man who has been deemed a stranger to the truth, if you insist in coming here and doing that and leave us to suffer in a situation of political morality, history will not deal kindly with you.”
She also issued a similar call to those residing in the United States of America and urged all nationals not to be blinded by greed or be fearful of standing up for moral and ethical principles.
“I say to you in America, if you insist on getting on a plane and coming here and putting a government that been called politically immoral, history will not deal kindly with you. ‘I tell you all around, if you are so blinded by greed or you are so paralysed by fear that you cannot stand up and say enough is enough and we will not tolerate political immorality, history will not deal kindly with you.”
She claimed that the current situation could lead to dictatorship.
“What we are saying here means that Denzil Douglas can get up at 12 o’clock at night, if we put him back there, and decide to call Parliament and we will wake up in the morning and find that he has designed himself leader for life and no more elections.
“What we are seeing here means that if we should put him back there he will send your children back into the school, which is already fixing. We don’t know if it is a death trap or not, because we have not found out what’s wrong. Because once he is able to get away with that, political immorality will become more and more immoral.”
The former member of the now defunct United National Empowerment Party made reference to a number of statements Dr. Douglas made in the past and a scathing one recently made at a political meeting in his Constituency.
“He had stood up and said: ‘Me could incite you know!’ And he got away with that! He had brought a man here to sing about violence in the midst of violence and he got away with that. He, as a man trained to preserve life, talked about no man stands alive, all man dead or wounded, and he is getting away with that.”
Dr. Phillip-Browne noted that a female in Dr. Douglas’s Administration subtly infused that his last statement might have been intentional.
“...Hearing the voice of his chief defender, his sometimes Deputy, who in her own words said she believes he is deliberate. What she is saying to us and to the whole world is that he has determined that he is going to do what he likes, when he likes, regardless to how anybody feels about it. And she showed that she was annoyed at it.”
Quoting the US President again, Dr. Phillip-Browne said, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” adding that “no situation is perfect, none of us here is perfect, but we must start somewhere because our country cannot continue like this.”
She also made reference to a cheque Dr. Douglas had received sometime in the past and denied that it was intended for him, claiming that he is not the only person named Denzil Douglas; a denial he later admitted to a member of the press.
The doctor also spoke to some $2,500 being distributed to many citizens by the Labour Party in an effort to win their vote.
She asked her audience to carefully examine the high cost of living imposed on them by the Douglas Administration with its reckless spending and the imposition of the Value Added Tax since 2010 and to compare that with the $2,500 being doled out to them at election time.
“I want to say to those of you with the monies. I started to talk to you about the VAT and I said to you that every $100 that you break $17 go poof, and I am not only talking about food. I said after one year $884 is not going back. In four and a half years, if you spend $100 in food, they now have $3,757 for you.
“So when they going to give you $2,500, you could have gotten a lot more saved.”
The ‘Messenger of Christ’ then asked her audience: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
She also spoke to the swapping of land to offset the high National Debt and Citizenship by Investment programme, which she implied that it is estimated that 17,731 passports were sold between January 2012 and June 2014 of which 10,000 were sold to foreigners for US250,000 each.
“Our country is going down the wrong road and you must stop and take away the keys from the man who has the bulldozer. We gave him a ship of state that he has turned into a bulldozer, and we want back the keys...This is no time for complacency, but a time to stand up for your country,” stressed Dr. Thelma Phillip-Browne.
