I used to believe that Dr. Denzil Douglas would one day stop telling so many lies. But it seems that he can’t help himself.
At the St. Johnson Community Centre last night, he told some real whoppers.
One had to do with a meeting which was held at the Marriott Hotel in 2008, attended by himself, Dr. Asim Martin, Barbados Prime Minister Mr. David Thompson, Mr. Sam Condor, Dr. Timothy Harris, Mr. Hartley Henry and myself.
The meeting had been convened to discuss ongoing concerns by Condor, Harris and myself with the way in which Dr. Douglas was leading the Cabinet and the Government.
Retreats involving the full Cabinet, Party officials and advisers had been held prior to that. But the situation got no better.
Henry had informed Condor, Harris and myself of the Marriott meeting.
When we got there, Douglas pretended that he didn’t know what the meeting was all about. But he didn’t fool anybody. After all, Henry would never have organized the meeting, and Thompson would never have come, without Douglas’ consent in the first place. In addition, the part of the hotel that was used would have required the consent of the owner, and that would’ve been arranged by or on behalf of Douglas.
So the truth is that all of them knew everything about the meeting well before Condor, Harris and I found out.
We made the point at the start that we were very concerned with Douglas’ leadership style, and that we wanted him to make a real effort to change. We also raised the point that we thought it was time to put in place a succession plan going forward.
At no time did we withdraw our support for him or demand that he stand down.
However, during the course of the discussion, he said that he would stand down within two weeks.
About 30 minutes later, Thompson remarked that nobody had taken up Douglas’ offer to stand down, to which we replied that we were prepared to go along with him on this.
By this time, of course, we understood that these guys were ‘gaming’ us. Thompson and Douglas were fellow prime ministers, members of a special club which we didn’t belong to. They’d do each other favours. And Thompson would not throw his fellow PM. At least not for Condor, Harris and myself.
Over the next few weeks, Douglas went and had meetings to get people to declare their solidarity with him and their support of him, and his offer to stand down died a natural death. He started to beat his chest.
Yet at St. Johnson Community Centre last night he said that Condor, Harris and I had called that meeting in 2008 to oust him. A lie! We could always have ousted him, from July, 1995, onwards, but that was not what we wanted to do. We wanted him to change his nasty ways.
Of course, on more than one occasion, including during the 2010 general elections, he has said that he would not run again. But look what he’s doing now! He too lie!
He also told the folks last night that he loves Sam Condor, and he wanted to give Condor a hug!
The love part was not just a lie, it was a Judas lie! But a much bigger lie, because Judas betrayed Jesus after he had kissed Jesus, while Douglas has been betraying and disrespecting Condor for the last nearly 18 years.
It was only two days ago that he stripped him of his post as Leader of Government Business in Parliament.
He is trying to say: “Lord, I love, Sam, you know, but I have to deal with him, so don’t take it personally. I have disrespected him for 17 years, and now that he has decided to stop taking ‘knock bout’ from me, I will punish him some more, but I will say how much I love him”.
“Sam, I love you”. Lie!
Then he said that he had briefed Condor before leaving for his trip to Africa right after the elections of January 2010, and that he had instructed the Attorney General to have Condor appointed if anything untoward developed during his absence from the Federation. Lie again!
And I can go on and on and cite enough lies from him to fill up the Encylopedia Brittanica.
In fact, he does not just tell lies. He is a lie. A living lie.
He leads up an organization for which he has no respect. He is not, and never was, a lover of the Labour Party or the Labour Movement. Indeed, when he returned from university he discussed being a candidate and being part of the leadership of PAM. But at the same time he was checking out the possibilities in Labour, because he realized that to achieve his goal, and his only goal, which was being PM, he’d have to keep his options open. Nothing to do with philosophy or anything like that. He wanted power and would take it however it came.
And he soon realized that his goal might be more easily achieved through Labour, once he could knock out Charles Mills as the representative for Constituency 6, and once Lee Moore lost the elections of 1989. That way he would have an easy seat in Parliament and Moore would be out.
Welcome, new leader of Labour.
He even had a bit of a run-in with Moore and Fitzroy Bryant at that time because they wanted Mills to have one more term, and he reminded them that the offer to run for PAM was also available to him.
First Bryant, then later, Moore, softened. Mills was kicked to the curb, and in came Douglas.
Moore lost for the third time to Constance Mitcham, and after the 1989 elections, bye bye, Lee Moore.
That path to the Party’s leadership had nothing whatsoever to do with any loyalty to Labour.
Douglas used Labour, like he sought to use PAM, as a stepping stone to power. And he is still using Labour and lying to Labour people.
He detests the Union, he hates the idea of industrial justice and workers’ rights, and, the truth is, he has little sympathy for the small man. He has use for the small man, yes, in that he likes to use him. But no sympathy.
He is a living lie.
He has surrounded himself with men and women who’re willing to make themselves available to the highest bidder, willing to sell their souls, like Judas, for a few pieces of silver, and willing to plunder and pillage the people and their birthright, as long as their greedy snouts can remain in the trough.
All under the banner of Labour, and the motto ‘For The Good That We can Do’. And the lie to that is that their real motto is ‘For The Good That We can Do For us!’
Now on Sunday, January 13, he intends to have a Special Party Conference.
The Conference will itself be a lie because it will probably not be properly convened under the Party’s constitution, it will not have equal numbers in each delegation, and it will be padded up with Douglas’ yellers in an effort, following up on last night’s event, to intimidate and influence and isolate them.
Last night he and his yellers were saying that there are only two parties in St. Kitts so that someone could only run for or vote for one or the other, and if you aren’t one then you’re the other.
Expect that kind of nonsense on Sunday.
The worst irony of this is that the biggest imposter ever to have darkened the doors of the Labour Party has become its leader, and he is encouraging Party supporters-who he knows are so dedicated to Labour- to point a finger at the two persons who, more than anyone else in the past 30 years, have represented at leadership level, what Labour is truly about. He wants the supporters to turn against Condor and Harris and to lift him up. He wants them to think that Condor’s and Harris’ problems with him are the same as non-support for the Party. Like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and others, he wants supporters to be blind to his true nature, to be unthinking, and to behave like he is the Party.
And, sadly, some of them are doing that.
For him, anybody who does not kiss his backside is a traitor to the Party. Or at least, that is the lie that he sells to people.
He will tell Sunday’s attendees that he has tried his best with Condor and Harris and that he needs to get on with the work of the Government and the Party. He will say that these two men have frustrated him, and frustrated progress, and that in order to carry out the mandate which he honestly and sacredly received from the people in the elections of 2010, (another whopper!), he needs to get a free hand to select other persons as candidates going forward.
He will say, or have his yellers say, that if Condor and Harris were to run against Labour they would be traitors to Labour.
He will not look to throw the two men out of the Party, but he will use the Special Conference to completely close them out, and prepare for life without them.
And he will try to use the Special Conference as a platform to Parliament’s sitting next Tuesday, if indeed he goes ahead with it.
If Parliament does sit, expect him: to announce the new Leader of Government Business (who is likely to be Marcella Liburd or Patrice Nisbett), to try to appoint a new Attorney General so that he might get one extra vote (which would neutralize Condor and Harris in any vote that required a simple majority of all members), to start the Budget Debate, and along the way, to taunt Opposition members into losing their cool and being named so that the voting numbers against him might be reduced.
Expect no debate of the No Confidence Motion. That has not been entered in the Clerk’s Book which is referred to in the Rules of Parliament. And it should have been entered, as is stipulated by the Rules. But that is not the worst of it, you know.
They cannot find the Book!!! So they say. Is someone lying? And if they cannot find the Book, a book is a book. Get another one.
These guys are tempting fate.
Soon thereafter, do not be surprised if he reshuffles Cabinet, takes away the portfolios of Condor and Harris so that they would be out of the Cabinet and runs his reconfigured Cabinet until the election.
In the meanwhile, on the outside, SIDF money is being spent like crazy. A few hundred thousand dollars have found their way into the political campaign over in Nevis, and a large share out took place recently here in St. Kitts.
The SIDF money is being used to help Parry and Douglas win elections.
The SIDF is a lie, a total lie, and the guilty ones will pay a high price for it when reckoning time comes around.
Here is my final word: in the upcoming elections, vote your conscience. Vote for the person who you think is sincere, and willing and able to serve with integrity and efficiency. And let all of those individuals who are elected decide upon forming a Government. Vote for what is right for the country and for you. Do not worry yourselves about Party banners, party slogans, and election hype. Those are temporary things, lies to fool you off, then you are left to suffer for five more years.
Douglas has killed the real Labour. Vote against him and anyone who is part of his lie. And I bet you that in the end, with Douglas and his lies gone, you will have a real Labour Prime Minister.
And in quick time the real Labour will be resurrected, cleansed of the lie that has bedeviled it for the last 23 years.
No more lies.
