Says “It is time for him to go!”
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – LEADER of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the House of Parliament, the Hon. Mark Brantley said that Prime Minister Douglas is completely bankrupt of ideas to rescue the Federation from its economic and social travails and it is time for him to go.
Brantley and four other Opposition Members - Vance Amory, Shawn Richards, Eugene Hamilton and Vincent Byron, Jr. – had boycotted the 2012 Budget Presentation and Debate, claiming that the St. Kitts-Nevis government was bent on preventing the passage of the Integrity in Public Life Bill 2011 into law.
Their absence had sparked a number of scathing comments from the Government Benches, including Dr. Douglas, who took umbrage to their absence and testily said, “Over $300 000 have been paid to the Members of the Opposition by the taxpayers of St. Kitts and Nevis to do their work, and they have refused to do the people’s work.”
And in his statement of condemnation, Senator Richard Skerritt said, “Mr. Speaker, it is nothing more than a petty political grandstanding by members opposite, who, in my opinion, are being intellectually lazy in the face of a challenging budget debate. And it is mainly because they have little factually or analytically to criticise following the IMF’s, I believe, surprise media conference on Monday afternoon.”
Brantley however rubbished their condemnations and declared that the action taken by the Opposition Members is in their rejection of the failed policies by the Labour and the Nevis Reformation Party regimes.
“The PAM and CCM members of the Opposition took a unanimous stance to boycott the Budget Debates for this year in the National Assembly as an unequivocal statement of our rejection of the Dr. Denzil Douglas-led Labour/NRP regime and its failed policies.
“Any government which is afraid of laws to prevent governmental corruption is sending a clear signal that it is itself corrupt.”
He enunciated that the historic stance taken unanimously by the Opposition Members was in the best interests of the nation and that it had upset “the Prime Minister and his ministers who have spent the last three days in the National Assembly talking to themselves”.
“The Prime Minister must now understand that it will not and cannot be business as usual, and no amount of posturing and vitriolic attacks will change the harsh realities of his failed leadership and his efforts to prevent our nation from having the tools to fight corruption in high places,” Brantley added.
The Opposition Leader declared that they have pledged to continue to be vigilant and to maintain the pressure, on what he called “this failed regime”, so that some sense of transparency and good governance could be restored to the twin-island Federation.
“We are united in the belief that Dr. Denzil Douglas is long past his sell by date and is completely bankrupt of ideas as to how to rescue our country from the tragic economic, social and security morass into which his failed policies have forced us,” Brantley said.
“Put it simply,” Brantley implied, “it is time for him to go.”
