BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ANYONE who thinks that the ruling St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) is attempting to change the electoral boundaries to gain a political advantage is a “political infant and babe”.
Those were the heated words of Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas during a session of the National Assembly yesterday (Dec. 10). The SKNLP Leader was the last Parliamentarian to take the floor and he delivered a scathing message to detractors and naysayers of his government.
“Some people who are uninformed and who are petty in their thinking and who are political infants and babes would seem to make people believe that the government is involved in revisiting the boundaries in order to gain some advantage in winning the next election.
“They are so naive in their thinking that they fail to recognise it is three consecutive elections won by this government with the same boundaries, and we will be victorious again whenever the elections are called. We are dealing with some political infants and babes who want to put their interests above the interests of the country and that is why they will have another sound defeat,” Douglas noted.
The Prime Minister pointed to the results of a recent poll conducted by the Caribbean Research Development Services in which it was found that the SKNLP would win the majority of seats in the next election as proof that his party do not need to resort to political machinations to claim success.
Douglas said that boundary changes would be fulfilment of a commitment made to the international community that St. Kitts-Nevis would resolve the imperfections in its electoral reform system. Addressing his parliamentary colleagues, he stressed that he was speaking under “strange and peculiar” circumstances.
“It is really a peculiar circumstance because the work of the Parliament is really not completed. One of the important final activities of this Parliament under normal circumstances would have involved receipt of a report from the Constituency Boundaries Commission (CBC).
“We would have debated in this house a draft proclamation which would have emanated from that report, and it would have been perfected in order to bring forth a proclamation by the signature of His Excellency the Governor-General. That would have had important effects in this country to correct some of the wrongs, inequities, the unfairness and the injustice we see at the moment in the electoral system in regards to the sizes of our constituencies as delineated by the boundaries.”
He added: “On Monday, another injunction order was issued from the court by Justice Belle and, as a result of that, the matter is still in the court and it prevents again Parliament from doing its work.”
The controversial issue of boundary changes first erupted in July when opposition party the People’s Action Movement filed an injunction against the use of the CBC report. After a contentious 13-week trial, Justice Errol Thomas ruled in October that the report was null and void.
The Commission began meeting again in November, but following the resignations of two of its members, its progress was halted by a judicial review brought by opposition Parliamentarians Hon. Shawn Richards and Hon. Mark Brantley. Earlier this week, Justice Francis Belle imposed another injunction on the use of any CBC-produced report until the review was complete.
Court will resume on Monday, December 14.
