While I don’t have a horse in the race, I have the right, and the responsibility, to follow what’s happening in the upcoming Nevis elections.
Recently I said on the WINN FM show “Inside The News” that the NRP campaign in Nevis had the political DNA of Dr. Denzil Douglas all over it.
My comment elicited a response from Mr. Joseph Parry, the NRP Leader and Nevis Premier, who declared that the NRP was perfectly capable of conducting an election on its own, denied that Dr. Douglas was involved, and said that I was becoming a distraction and that I needed to explain the presence of national security personnel in Nevis for the 2007 by-election between Mr. Hensley Daniel and Mr. Mark Brantley for the Nevis 9 seat, handcuffing NRP supporters.
Well, here’s evidence of the presence of Dr. Douglas’ DNA in the NRP campaign.
He has said publicly that he wants to see Nevis “green”. And if that is what he wants, then he can be expected to act to achieve what he wants.
A number of his election personnel and other resources have been deployed to assist the NRP on the ground.
Labour is in a coalition Government with NRP. For Dr. Douglas, this is ‘insurance’ to help keep himself in office. And his Cabinet includes Mr. Patrice Nisbett who is an NRP candidate in the upcoming election. He recently endorsed Mr. Nisbett in public.
If NRP were to win the election, Dr. Douglas would do all that he could (in terms of patronage, Federal guarantees, constituency boundary re-alignments, etc.) to help them get at least two (2) seats in the next Federal elections, which would be added ‘insurance’ for him. Such a move (in addition to giving him leverage to deal with some personnel matters in St. Kitts which he’s itching to deal with) would strike a heavy blow against CCM, and especially against Mr. Mark Brantley who Dr. Douglas detests. In the process, he would become the de facto strong man in Nevis which is his last frontier in the Federation to ‘capture’, and, make no mistake, he wants to ‘capture’ and control Nevis.
And already he has had an impact on the NRP ethos, as we hear some NRP supporters demonstrate their submission to him by raving about his skill as an election strategist and saying that he will help them win on 11th July. Meanwhile, they blissfully ignore ‘little’ things such as propriety, integrity, the rule of law, etc.
Dr. Douglas is an ‘election scientist’. After the last Federal elections he said publicly that elections are about the science of numbers. The idea is that if you are in charge of the system, then you must make sure that you use the system to your advantage, and you must put numbers where you want them to be, whether in or out.
In this context, look at what is happening. Scores and scores of Kittitians who don’t even know where the Electoral Office is in Nevis, worse yet where their ‘residences’ are in Nevis, are registered to vote in Nevis…numbers in. And hundreds of names of Nevisian residents who have voted lawfully, time and again, have had their names removed from the Voters’ List, many with notices sent to them after the day of the hearings of the Objection Claims…numbers out.
The system is being used to favour Mr. Parry, both in terms of the numbers and in the use of the institutions and officers involved in electoral matters, while it disenfranchises bona fide Nevisian voters. It is utterly disgraceful and depraved. And it is all happening under the guiding hand of the ‘election scientist’.
The NRP slogan ‘Performance Matters’ is taken straight out of the playbook of the Labour Party’s ‘It’s Working’ slogan in the Federal Elections of 25th January, 2011. The two slogans say essentially the same thing: we have performed, things are working, we are the ones with the skill, the credentials and the experience to lead this country.
And both slogans were crafted by, or received the blessings of, Strategic Communications Laboratory (SCL), the British propaganda company engaged to design the ‘It’s Working’ campaign with funding from a European private source which has made some serious money out of this country over the past 5 years.
SCL is expert in bending people’s minds, and getting them to believe the strangest things.
And obviously so, as any objective observer would have seen that the country was not working on 25th January, 2010.
What was working, and working to Dr. Douglas’ advantage, was the fact that he had loads and loads of money at his disposal, he had an electorate that was less discerning and vigilant than it could have been, he had the SCL propaganda machine in place, and he had a weak effort by PAM.
Mr. Parry’s support network seems to have loads and loads of money at its disposal. A large number of people in the UK, Canada, USA, and the Caribbean (more than ever before, it’s believed) are getting tickets to fly to Nevis to vote.
Do you feel the hand of the ‘election scientist’ in this? I do.
Part and parcel of this has been the drive, over the past year or so, to get as many overseas-born and based descendants of Kittitians and Nevisians as possible registered as citizens and as voters in the upcoming election.
Sounds familiar? And who do you think signs citizenship certificates?
Wherever Mr. Parry is getting the money, it’s flowing. Some of it would have ended up in the pockets of Vybz Kartel, the Dance Hall singer, but the alleged talks with him to do a concert for the NRP didn’t work out. Then when he did a song for the CCM, the NRP accused the CCM of poor judgment, because they say that the artiste encourages the gangster lifestyle.
The money is flowing in St. Kitts, where, for the first time (as far as I can recall) political campaign jingles are being aired on radio and on ZIZ Television. And it seems to be all NRP.
By the way, is NRP paying ZIZ for these jingles? Did ZIZ give CCM a similar opportunity? Or is ZIZ the property of Dr. Douglas, to be used only as he dictates?
The money is flowing, and NRP’s media blitz is hot and heavy, in St. Kitts because of the scores of Kittitians who are wrongly registered to vote in Nevis.
In addition, there’s an effort presently underway whereby certain known individuals have been coming to St. Kitts (one a foreign female), and are due to return during the upcoming week, as they try to round up the people whose names are registered to vote in Nevis.
Their ‘clients’ are being advised on the details and the arrangements for their journeys to Nevis, on where they are to be picked up and by whom, on money matters, etc.
The NRP well wishers are even checking the St. Kitts jail population to see if any of their ‘clients’ are incarcerated and if they can be released to come Nevis to re-elect the NRP.
I would be willing to bet that these same individuals wouldn’t give a damn about helping any of their ‘clients’ out of jail after the elections are over, or out of any trouble that their ‘clients’ might get themselves into by going over to Nevis over the next eight days to vote in an election in which they have no business.
I have spoken out against this “ferrying of votes”. I think that it is legally and morally wrong for Kittitians who have absolutely no legitimate residential connection to Nevis to be allowed to register and vote in Nevis. It is also wrong for people to shift their votes from one island to the other for local and Federal elections.
But the effort continues. Indeed, on Saturday, 2nd July, Mr. Parry again called upon Kittitians registered in Nevis to come over to vote, and he cautioned the CCM people publicly to behave themselves on election day, or else there would be “blood on the streets”.
Now apart from being incredibly threatening, incendiary, distasteful and out of order, this comment by Mr. Parry sounded very Douglas-esque, reminding of “I incite already, you know, and I could incite again” and of “If Eugene Hamilton gets elected there will be a revolution in this country!”.
Mr. Parry’s comment suggests that not only is Dr. Douglas in control of the NRP campaign, but he’s even in control of Mr. Parry’s language and attitude.
And it provides even more cause for concern when taken in tandem with an earlier, just as unfortunate comment of Mr. Parry’s: “Let the guns blaze!”
In the context of Mr. Parry’s most unfortunate language, let me respond, as I end, to his insistence that an explanation is needed from me for what he claims was the presence in Nevis during the by-election of 2007 of National Security personnel from St. Kitts who handcuffed NRP supporters.
I was the Minister of National Security at the time, and Mr. Parry’s comment, made not for the first time, seeks to implicate me in whatever may have happened in Nevis on that day in 2007.
After I heard the allegations back then, I consulted commanders in our National Security agencies, and I was told that no personnel had been deployed. And even if police officers were to have been deployed, that would have been done as a routine exercise, with the Force sending officers from one island to the other when, in the opinion of the commanders, an event or events warranted. In any case, they would have been wearing their uniforms.
And only in a situation in which the commanders felt that there might be out-of-the-ordinary chances of security problems would the Minister be advised.
I knew nothing. In fact, when it was suggested that I was involved, I thought that somebody was making a joke. But it turned out to be a story that Mr. Parry and those around him found worthy of peddling.
If there is anybody in this country, or anywhere else for that matter, who can prove that I was in any way involved in any security arrangement during the by-election in Nevis, then he or she should bring the proof.
A total nonsense story!
What is real though is this. While I was Minister, intelligence coming in indicated that guns, including AK47s, and ammunition were being smuggled into the Federation through Nevis. And security personnel wanted to undertake raids on specially selected locations in Nevis to try to locate and retrieve the contraband.
I raised the matter with Mr. Parry and he agreed to the raids. But a few days later he told me that the Forces should hold off, claiming that Nevisians would be very uncomfortable seeing militarily clad and armed people on their soil.
I told him that while I understood, I also believed that Nevisians would prefer that than having to see dead bodies on the streets of Nevis, victims of gun and other violence. He said that the security people should hold off nevertheless.
By that time I had come to recognize how tightly he and Dr. Douglas were hooked up, and I knew that pursuing the matter would be futile.
With the passage of time, and given the “let the guns blaze” and “blood on the streets” comments, I am left to ask if Mr. Parry, who didn’t want militarily clad and armed personnel on Nevisian soil 4-5 years ago to protect Nevisian lives, will now invite the same militarily clad and armed personnel onto Nevisian soil, with the blessings of Dr. Douglas, to intimidate and control Nevisians on 11th July, 2011.
Is it not the primary obligation of a leader to protect his or her people? And can it be right for a leader to push the people to the brink, then point guns at them?
Has Dr. Douglas taken full control of the NRP election strategy and its leader?
