Fix "D" Politics
It seemed my village was a flood of euphoria.
I heard the sounds of bells, whistles, car horns, singing, loud voices, conch shells blowing, vehicles swooshing by; headlights fully lit. The moment seemed intensely electrifying. I saw my mother on her knees; I assumed she was praying
My father grabbed a few pieces of clothing in preparation to hit the scene on the outside. My older siblings just stood there; keenly observing all that was unfolding; trying to grasp an understanding of what seemed to us to be some unprecedented moment; a moment of jubilation. I would later learn that a very heated political campaign had come to a catastrophic end for one party and a triumphant beginning for another.
To my mind, all that excitement couldn’t be such a bad thing. In my innocence, I hadn’t a clue that the politics we practiced then would be one of the underlying components that would make life devastating for one group of citizens while the complete opposite would be realized by another group.
History should be to us a great teacher. Therein lies a rich catalogue of experiences, lessons, documented and undocumented truths, fairy tales and falsehoods that allow History to be the great phenomenon that it is. While it remains a fundamental resource to teach us, in History lies destructive demons that continue to nibble away at the fabric of our communities.
Alas, we have become modern day slaves to an aspect of History to which many key areas of our lives are pegged: politics. From our economy, to religion, from education to sports, and even our family lives, politics for us has become the ultimate divider. When our people came together to fight the social ills that had been meted out to us by our enslavers, wasn't politics supposed to be a uniter?
Most citizens agree that on polling day, we might have differing sides, but how is it we take the same energy and for sixty months carry on in election mode, from one term to the next? Destructive one might add but herein lies the evidence that it is the politics we must fix.
Go to Church, politics is an ever present force dividing us at the altar: “Me doan siddung pan dem pew dey. Das d PAM people dem spot”.
Go to our schools: "So you know I get transferred after de elections because I vote ‘gainst PAM?
Go to our sports facilities: "I stop support football cause only LABOUR players getting pick on de national team".
We even determine which business to support based on our political stripes. Is it a LABOUR shop or is it a PAM shop?
The politics we practice in a small society such as ours, driven sometimes by our own politicians, is what helps to keep the poor, poorer and the well off, better off.
It seems the political sparring allows politicians to maintain a base of loyalists who are expected to serve as political hacks who will never condemn the wrong doings of the party they support, even while our federation's well being is at stake.
If at some point we do not “fix the politics” we are guaranteed one thing; the element of division will remain among our people, and it is often the poorer, hard working class who suffers.
When we reflect on our attainment of twenty-eight years of Independence, what do we envision for our sweet St. Kitts and our beloved Nevis? Have we moved forward in unison as a people or are we even more divided?
Have we become our worst enemy because of our political views? Do we honour our motto and national anthem regardless of the political party in power?
It is the politics we must fix if government is to acknowledge that it is elected by SOME of the people to serve ALL of the people. The minute government's agenda is to appeal only to the wishes of those who voted for them is certainly the moment opposition mounts feverishly. Have we not learned from the mistakes of previous administrations?
It is the politics we must fix when a former police officer recounts the pain brought to his family by a PAM lead administration twenty-five years ago. In his eyes the pain runs deep; so deep that he will likely NEVER vote for or give an ear to the current opposition in St. Kitts so long as he lives. He is yet to forgive or to forget.
It is the politics we must fix when a family shares their story of a father, unceremoniously dismissed by the current LABOUR administration only to replace that civil servant with a renowned political hack.
The stories of hurt at the mercy of politics are widespread from one party to the next. If we remove the political stripes, the hurt translates to the victimization of a citizen of the federation of St. Kitts and Nevis; a clear indication that it is the politics we must fix if we are to engender real change.
The villagers chanted, the hi-fi's blasted, the party shirts went on and the people huddled together in a central location of my village. A celebration was mounting; one that was probably more flamboyant than that I had experienced as a child.
Years after my first brush with election jubilation in my village, the destructive politics still seemed burrowed in the hearts of our communities, lurking in the very corners from which they can ferment with enough force to destroy. The sense of unity, national pride, passion for our land of birth still seems tainted by our politics.
Twenty-eight years later, we are the ones who have to be emboldened to fix this scourge that is somehow pegged to almost every aspect of our social existence. We are the ones who can steer the ship gone awry back on course.
Twenty-eight years later, it is not Mother England but Kittitians and Nevisians who are the real architects of our nation's destiny.
Let's not wait another twenty-eight years to "Fix D Politics".
