PM Douglas says he will not be distracted from election campaign

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, JANUARY 23RD 2010 (CUOPM) – Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas says his St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party has been able to transform “in a very significant way, life for the people of St. Kitts and Nevis.”
 
He denied in a BBC Caribbean telephone interview Thursday that he has access to millions of dollars in a US bank account.
 
“That is absolute nonsense, total and absolute nonsense,” said Prime Minister Douglas. “I never did and this reference to millions of dollars in a bank account that belongs to the mother of my children is really ludicrous.”
 
“This is a red-herring that is being thrown across the (political) trail by Lindsay Grant in the dying hours of his failing campaign in order to take me off track and not allowing me to continue to drive home the programme of progress and the vision to the development of St. Kitts and Nevis in the future.”
 
Dr. Douglas responding to BBC Caribbean said one of reasons why he persevered despite the court challenge and the lateness of the day before the elections were called was to respond appropriately to the specific recommendations that came from the Commonwealth Observer Mission Report with regard to the sizes of the boundaries.
 
“We were being told that some constituencies were too large compared to others,” said Prime Minister Douglas.
 
 He expressed the concern that “after the People’s Action Movement (PAM) has dragged the process through the Courts, and now that they are staring defeat in their faces, when that defeat comes, I am hoping that they will not drag us back into the Court to say that the boundaries should have been changed and the constituencies were not equal according to the Constitution.”
 
General elections for a new Parliament will be held on Monday 25th January.
 
In the previous Parliament, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party controlled seven of the eight seats on St. Kitts. The PAM had the other one. Two of the three seats in Nevis were controlled by the Concerned Citizens Movement and the other by the Nevis Reformation Party (NRP).