PAM’s motto: “Self first, Party second and Country last.”
By: The Thinking Citizen (A Labour Spokesman Columnist)
I think that the public needs reminding that the Labour Party has always been the party that espoused the best principles of Democracy and always sought to make General Elections “fee and fair” and “Free from fear”.
In an effort to safeguard and protect the Electoral System from the dirty and selfish tricks of PAM, the Bradshaw Government was forced to introduce a number of practical safety and precautionary measures
For example, Bradshaw made it mandatory for every voter to dip his finger in the electoral ink after casting his ballot on Polling Day. Even so, several PAM voters were caught in Bradshaw’s time, trying to vote a second time after endeavouring to clean off the electoral ink from their fingers.
We can all recall that a particular PAM candidate, who lost out at the 2004 General Elections, wrote in the Democrat newspaper shortly afterwards, that he himself, or a few of his supporters were able to clean the electoral ink off their fingers after voting on Polling Day. Why would the PAMites want to clean off the ink on Polling Day? Was it in order to be able to vote a second time?
PAM has never been shy to use dirty tricks to get into office. In May 1967, PAM wrote to the Governor demanding that the Bradshaw Government resign. Because that did not work, PAM joined with a party of Anguillian invaders to overthrow the Bradshaw Government by force of arms.
That too failed, and PAM then introduced a scheme under which the party’s supporters would vote twice in the same General Elections. The Bradshaw Government countered this move by PAM by instituting the use of electoral ink at every Election. After voting, each voter was required to dip his finger in the electoral ink provided.
PAM was undeterred and so when the party got into office in 1980, the Simmonds Administration passed into Law in 1983, the notorious Bill entitled “The House of Assembly Elections Ordinance (Amendment) Act”. The new Act dispensed with the Residence Requirement and allowed PAM, for the very first time in our country’s history, to bring in voters from anywhere overseas, to vote for the PAM party. PAM is out of power now and because of that, the party wants the Residence Requirement to be reintroduced.
The PAM party also did another “about-face”. The Simmonds Administration in 1983 refused and rejected the Labour Party’s proposal conceding the use of Voter I.D. Cards. PAM was in power then. Labour is in office now and the PAM party wants the Labour Government to introduce the same Voter I.D. Cards that the PAM Government rejected in 1983. PAM wants Voter I.D. Cards with “finger-prints”.
Certain political propagandists have been falsely accusing the Labour Government of improperly selling off Sugar Estates lands to foreigners. The propagandists however would never say how many housing lots were distributed to low-income earners between 1975 and 1980 and again, later on, between 1995 and the present time.
Never would the propagandists inform the general public that the PAM Government attempted to sell off the Basseterre Sugar Factory and with it, hundreds of acres of prime sugar lands to a firm of Jamaican sugar manufacturers; Jamaicans are foreigners.
When we consider non-sugar lands we discover that the PAM Government “issued a MANDATE to an Anguillian Company, Keystone International Ltd, to govern the development of the (South East) Peninsula. Many respected legal scholars interpreted the MANDATE as a conveyance of government’s rights over the Peninsula to Keystone”.
But look at how PAM dealt with land-distribution between 1980 and 1995. During that period the PAM politicians grabbed the best pieces of prime sugar lands for themselves, their friends and their families. The PAM politicians grabbed land at Bird Rock and at different parts around the country. In grabbing their pieces of land at Bird Rock, the PAM politicians forgot all about the landless, low-income families at New Town and Baker’s Corner.
Some PAMites took possession of government lands in 1981, 1982 and 1983. The lands were not properly paid for until 1995 when the Labour Party took up office.
The Labour Government became the legal owner of the Sugar Estates lands in 1975. The Labour Government remained in power until 1980. Unlike the members of the Simmonds Administration who grabbed land for themselves and sold large areas to foreigners, not one Labour politician took one square inch of land for himself or his family or friends.
PAM allowed large areas of St. Kitts land to be sold to foreigners some of whom lived as far away as the Middle East. But just listen to this.
In the early 1970s the Labour Government built a 125-room hotel at Frigate Bay. The hotel was called the Royal St. Kitts Hotel and Casino. It was not the best hotel in the world, but it was capable of accepting tourist on a mass scale.
PAM took office in 1980 and one night in February 1982 a mysterious fire broke out in the hotel’s kitchen, and by early morning, the operations facility was burnt to the ground. PAM sold the hotel to a foreign company by the name of Tans-American Invest Inc.
There was something mighty peculiar and questionable about the fire and about the sale of the Royal St. Kitts Hotel to Trans-American Invest Inc. During the time of the sale of the hotel a very senior PAM Government Minister was given a cheque for US$58,000.00 by Trans-American Invest Inc. and all the insurance money (the hotel was insured by government) was paid over to Trans-American.
Certain PAM land speculators have been criticising government’s land-use policy. Those critics claim that government is giving away all of our land to foreigners. Such a claim is false and proves clearly that the critics do not really understand government’s social, fiscal and economic plans for the over-all development of our country.
PAM has always been critical of Labour’s social and economic development policies, but PAM has never been able to equal or better any of Labour’s policies. During the 1960s and 70s PAM argued that the Sugar Industry should be closed down and all the sugar estates lands given over to a series of small-farmer pig farms.
During the 1960s and 1970s, PAM placed obstacle after obstacle in the path of the construction of the Fort Thomas Hotel. PAM prevented the implementation of INDELCO which was a huge project for the all-round development of Frigate Bay Estate. PAM organised a taxi-drivers’ strike while one of the world’s largest tourist liners was riding at anchor in the Basseterre Roadstead. Thanks to Earle Clarke a disastrous situation was averted.
You see, PAM wants to carry us back to Massa Day. Caribbean History teaches us that other islands in the Region have had to change from a sugar to a Non-Sugar economy at some stage. They sold large quantities of their sugar lands to foreigners. Examples are St. Croix, St. John’s, Tortola, Antigua, Barbados and Jamaica. Though Anguilla was never a sugar island it has sold large quantities of its land to foreigners.
Ultimately a land-use policy boils down to the question of Comparative Advantage and the rate of Economic Returns. Would selling 10 acres of land to a local to plant yams, tannias and sweet potatoes (or operate a pig farm) be more beneficial and advantageous to the country in the intermediate and long run than selling the 10 acres to a foreigner to put down a hotel?
PAM ought to know that countries do not make economic progress by returning to a state of Subsistence Economy. PAM built the South-East Peninsula Road. PAM should explain to us why the Road was built and how many Aliens Land Holding Licences the PAM Government issued to the foreigners who own land on the Peninsula.
The Accounting System in use today is called Double Entry, that is, one Entry is made for the Assets and another Entry is made for the Liabilities. The PAMites are bad and hopeless National Accountants. The PAMites record only the Liabilities (Debits) such as the National Debt and leave out the corresponding Assets (Credits) which represent the National Debt. The PAMites’ argument concerning the National Debt is couched in political and not economic terms. One cannot use politics to argue economics.
Although the current National Debt is higher than ever before, the standard of living and the quality of life of our people are also much higher than ever before. That is an indisputable fact.
In considering the matter of a National Debt one should bear two things in mind. Number one is the effect of the Debt on the standard of living and the quality of life, and number two, is the ability to manage and repay the Debt. The present Labour Government has shown its ability to manage and repay the Debt without lowering the standard of living of the people.
The great United States of America has a National Debt which is much greater than the National debt of Mexico. Yet thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants are crossing the border between Mexico and the USA every day to enter into the United Sates.
Clearly this should not happen. Americans should be rushing to get into Mexico. The much higher standard of living (there is great poverty in certain parts of Mexico) and the prospect of well-paying jobs drive multitudes of Mexicans into America every year.
It is a well-known fact that prosperity and economic progress bring problems such as increased crime and unlawful behaviour. The crime situation nowadays is worse than before. Most of the crimes that are being committed are gun-related.
Guns are not produced in St. Kitts or Nevis. They have to be imported lawfully or unlawfully. The Government is not receiving the support that it ought to receive in respect of the presence of, or the importation of, gun and ammunition into the country.
Obviously certain groups of people feel that their party’s chances at the polls would be increased favourably with each increase in the level of crimes and lawlessness. So apart from a lot of rhetoric and propaganda nothing practical, positive or substantial is being done by the groups to help in the situation.
With history as our guide we can easily identify the groups and understand how they function. They have never put “Country Above Self”. Apart from a lot of cheap talk it has always been “Self first, Party second and Country last”.
The thing that a keen political observer would notice about PAM is this: As long as PAM is not in power PAM has the answer and the solution for every social, economic and political problem that beset this country. But when PAM is victorious and is in power, PAM does not know its left hand from its right hand.
Sometimes PAM‘s right hand does not been know what the same right hand is doing. Just before the 2000 General Elections Dr. Simmonds blamed all his Cabinet colleagues for his personal down-fall and the down-fall of the PAM party.
However in spite of such a statement from Dr. Simmonds, one PAM fanatic writing in a recent issue of the SUN newspaper described the present Government “as the worst government ever in the history of St. Kitts, the Caribbean and maybe even the world”.
I am a curious person. I would like to know what that fellow ate or what he drank before he characterised the government in such terms.
How can a government be described as the “worst government” when the said government beat the PAM party 7 to 1 in 1995, 8 to 0 in 2000 and 7 to 1 in 2004 at the polls? The three General Elections were described as “creditable” by independent official overseas observers.
The PAM Government built a road through the South East Peninsula although the government did not own a stitch of land in the entire area.
Trans-American invest, the company that bought the Royal St. Kitts Hotel and Casino after the kitchen was burnt down, received from the PAM Government the full amount of the insurance money received by the government from the insurance company. In return Trans-American Invest gave a very senior PAM Government Minister the sun of US$58,000.00.
The PAM Minister of Finance, Dr. Kennedy Simmonds signed a Loan Guarantee in the sum of US$25,330,000 on behalf of Nautical Trading (St. Kitts) Ltd. Without knowing exactly what the government was getting itself into, Dr. Simmonds himself admitted publicly that he thought that signing the Loan Guarantee “was a mere formality”.
People interested in knowing how smart (corrupt) the PAM Government performed, should read the Report of the two Commissions of Inquiry, that is the Prof. Randolph Williams Report and the Sir Louis Blom-Cooper Report. After reading the two Reports, the provisions of “The House of Assembly Elections Ordinance (Amendment) Act 1983” should be carefully studied.
The fanatical PAMite who wrote in the SUN newspaper, forgot to mention that it was the PAM party that did everything possible to prevent the establishment and the proper functioning of both the National Provident Fund (NPF) and the Social Security Scheme (SSS). PAM was then, and still is, on the side of the Employers and not on the side of the workers (Employees).
The place to look for groups of crazy or stupid people is certainly not within the ranks of the Labour Party, but rather among those who find comfort and solace within the PAM camp.
Many Thursdays ago, the leadership of PAM, led a group of “poppy-show” people, through the streets of Basseterre on a march for Voter I.D. Cards. We must all remember that in 1983 Sir Lee L. Moore QC proposed to the PAM Government in the House of Assembly that PAM should introduce Voter I.D Cards in our Voting System. The Members of the PAM Government rejected the wise and progressive counsel of Lee Moore and laughed him to scorn.
In the year 2007, that is 24 years later the leadership of PAM became convinced, belatedly, that it is in the national interest to use Voter I.D. cards. So the leadership of PAM led a troop of “poppy-show” people behind a big band (it was Carnival in September), through the streets of Basseterre, on a march in favour of Lee Moore’s Voter I.D. Cards. PAM fooled the people and got them to believe that the march is in favour of “finger-prints”.
I have never seen a “finger-print” standing on a cloud of smoke or on a pillar of cloud. A “finger-print” must be on a card.
PAM’s Thursday afternoon march for “finger-prints” reminded me of the works of a childhood nursery rhyme”- The Grand Old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men, He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again!”
