BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – Just about 12 hours before the Nevis electorate went to the polls to elect the local government, incumbent Premier Joseph W. Parry made a final appeal in a bid to convince voters to return the Nevis Reformation Party to office.
In an address aired on television and radio on yesterday (July 10), Parry said the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) had the reins of power for 14 years prior to 2006, and during that period it had managed to make a mess of the island’s economy and governed without regard for transparency.
“The CCM government operated under a veil of secrecy. Transparency in government was a bad-word to them. They governed Nevis as it were their private property. They refused to be answerable to you the people who elected them. Laws, rules and regulations gave way to political expediency. Their so-called policies were void of considered thought. As a result (of) this dereliction of duty, Nevis suffered. Fellow citizens, they must have known their approach to government was wrong yet they persisted in their misrule and plug Nevis into a financial and fiscal morass.”
The Nevis Reformation Party – led by Premier Parry – was elected to office on July 10, 2006.
Parry noted that upon taking office, his party began the work of redeeming Nevis from the path of destruction on which it was placed by the CCM.
“On assuming the reins of government, 11th July, 2006, your NRP government was shocked to the core when we appreciated the extent of the fiscal and financial difficulties which the CCM left behind for your NRP government to solve. Undaunted, however, the NRP government went to work. We as a government took night and made day out of it. We were determined to succeed. We set out to engender hope and we set out to hold on to the faith and we did. We set out to achieve fiscal prudence in the economy and in the prevailing scheme of things, and with the help of The Almighty God, we did. Financial prudence was restored…
“We as a government put Nevis above self. We embarked on the redemption of our little Nevis, which was thoroughly abused by an uncaring regime called the Concerned Citizens Movement. As you can see, your NRP-government redeemed Nevis from the jaws of an unconcerned small group of operatives who regarded and treated Nevis as if Nevis was part of their back yard…”
Making a plea for the electorate to through their weight behind the NRP and give it “a deserved second term in government”, Parry expressed that to vote CCM would be a vote for regression rather than progression.
“So my people, I pose the simple question to you: Why should you change? Why should you take up an unnecessary risk once more with a party called CCM which for 15 or so years before July 2006 – when they controlled the government – was not able to attract a single sustainable industry into Nevis? They were unable to attract this as a result of their incompetence of the government, the absorption with self and not country, and the obvious lack of confidence that overseas investors had in their capacity to control and to manage successfully.
“Nevis must never revert into the twilight zone of depressive economic despair that the CCM government had brought into our midst. The CCM is an unfortunate reminder of a government that should never be. The 14 years that the people of Nevis suffered under CCM still mar our psyche. Now that you have escaped the nightmare, you must resolve never to return…When you look around, any fair-minded person would agree that NRP has performed; for eyes does lie. We respectfully ask you to reject the two-headed leadership of CCM. This CCM has being weighed in the balances and has been wanting. I say without reasonable fear of contradiction that we, the good citizens of Nevis, were justified in rejecting the CCM then and will be superlatively justified in rejecting them again.”
Five seats are up for grabs in the Nevis Island Assembly and both the CCM and the NRP have nominated candidates for vie in each of the five constituencies. The polls opened at 7:00 a.m. today (July 11) and will officially close at 6:00 p.m., at which point the ballots will be tabulated and winners will be named.
