BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MAYBE the time has come for the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis to consider legislating a grace period for the transfer of power to take place when an election concludes and administrations change.
This was the view expressed by social commentator and educator Newrish Nital who was one of the panelists of the first edition of SKNVibes’ talk show ‘Bottom Line’.
This particular edition explored the ‘blame game syndrome’ - which affects St. Kitts and Nevis – and as a sub-heading, the issue of transfer of power was addressed.
“Supporters are one thing, and then you have the authorities who are supposed to be making the transition. Those are the persons you have to focus on because you have certain persons in positions of power who are supposed to hand it over.
“But each campaign, you have at the core…something about corruption. And if I’m accusing you of being corrupt, then when the time comes for you to make that transition, if it is true you might encounter some problems because then you have to try and remove all trails and as a result of you being so antagonistic towards me, I’m not going to make that transition a smooth one…”
Nital proposed that rather than having an immediate power shift, a grace period could be implemented which would see proper and gradual transfer of information, processes etc. to the newly-elected administration.
“Maybe what we need to implement is a grace period… We need to say…within a month’s time you have the complete transfer of power. There and then you can find vital and critical information with respect to existing projects or things that might have been shelved for the next time period, being transferred to those who would be taking over. Because even though we have different ideologies, different principles, different preferences, I would need to know what exists now, what shuffling I have to do.
“…And that is why we have persons like Permanent Secretaries and these persons who supposed to assist in facilitating that because most of the times you would not have the politicians themselves humble enough to facilitate that smooth transition.”
The other panelists of the show were Ambassador Jonel Powell of the Team Unity Administration, Dr. Terrence Drew of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party and founder of Operation Rescue and former Parliamentarian G. A. Dwyer Astaphan.
They also lent their voice in debate of Nital’s suggestion.
To view the full broadcast of the ‘Bottom Line – the Blame Game’ edition, log on to SKNVibes.com on Monday (Feb. 13) morning where it would be posted.
