BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, May 14, 2010 (Labour Secretariat) - A petition signed by five of the defeated People’s Action Movement (PAM) candidates in the 2010 General Elections calling for Lindsay Grant to step aside as the leader of the party in light of serious concerns about his leadership has been snubbed by him.
The five disgruntled candidates fought tooth and nail in the campaign leading up to the elections and now that they have lost, their voices and their concerns are of little or no significance to the party leader and some in the top echelon of the party.
Some of the dissident candidates have said that they are worse off now than they were before they ran for elected office. Their political future is now doomed, they can never run again.
A senior member of the PAM said that they committed political suicide.
Some of PAM supporters and Grant’s lackeys have now set upon the “Gang of Five” calling them traitors and hypocrites because they committed a mortal sin, that of challenging the leadership of Mr. Grant.
As far as Grant is concerned, these five can sign all the petitions they want until God’s kingdom come asking for him to step aside, he will not budge.
But mature leadership is about accepting criticism, especially when those criticisms have to do with the future and direction of the organization.
Mr. Grant has presented himself as one who is above criticism saying that as far as he is aware there is no challenge to his leadership of the party. He has claimed that he has the support of the executive and the rank and file and to hell with everyone else.
We do not expect Grant to step aside from the leadership of the party. He is too arrogant to do so especially in light of the fact that he has money like the others do not.
But money is not everything. All the money in the world could not buy Grant the credibility, sound judgment, integrity, and humility he so lacks.
The Marriott affair will not go away because it brought to the fore the serious leadership deficiencies of Mr. Grant, who sat down with a so-called unknown international investor to negotiate a bribe.
The defeated five candidates feel that this incident did a lot of damage to the party.
Grant apparently is suffering from a messiah complex, yet he was not able to save himself from the Marriott scandal, nor has he ever been able to save himself from double defeat at the polls despite his money and megalomaniac aspirations of becoming Prime Minister.
The five disgruntled PAM candidates must be applauded for calling into question Grant’s leadership deficiencies.
However, word has it that they have been brought to their knees and threatened by the heavyweights of the PAM to be silent or face the consequences.
But that is PAM’s motto—to use, abuse and discard its candidates when they have lost.
If it were not for Grant’s money, he too would have been used, abused and refused because they all hold one thing in common, they are all losers.
They will victimize, discriminate and intimidate those who dare challenge the powers that be in the party.
We can only recall the incident when Michael Powell, Deputy Prime Minister, referred to Prime Minister Simmonds as the biggest stumbling block to progress. It followed that Powell was thrown out of Simmond’s Cabinet as a common criminal on April 1, All Fools Day.
Again we can think of Royden Benjamin, who ran against the Hon. Sam Condor in West Basseterre and how he was treated.
Mr. Benjamin resigned as a minister of religion to run as a candidate for PAM. After his defeat, PAM had no use for him, leaving him with no choice but to pack up his paucity of belongings and flee the country.
The examples can go on.
That is the history of the PAM. The “infamous five” are only the latest tragedy that really shows the true nature of a party who uses, abuses and then discards.
