BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, who is also the Leader of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party, the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas, has given an ultimatum to any individual who have openly criticised the Cabinet to do the “decent thing” and resign or face an ejection from the group.
Speaking Tuesday (Jan. 22) on his weekly radio programme ‘Ask the Prime Minister’, Dr. Douglas stated that a resignation by a cabinet minister is the normal procedure all over the world in every democracy when one disagrees with the wish of the cabinet.
“In fact, I understand that at the University of the West Indies in debates and discussions taken place over the last week or so in terms of government and politics, they are saying St. Kitts and Nevis seems to be rewriting the basic principles of democracy, in the sense that persons who are part of a cabinet are taking very strong positions against the government and against the policies and directives of a Cabinet and still want to remain as members of that Cabinet, that will not continue.”
He also said that if cabinet ministers wish to join forces with opposition members, they have a constitutional right to do so but should resign from the party that sent them to the parliament.
“You cannot expect to continue to be part of the Labour Party and you simply want to bring the Labour Party or government down, or any party for that matter.
“You would recognise that people would speak openly and critically to criticise their own party and that is expected, but when you are going to move away from your party’s allegiance and discipline and go into another party and support that party’s allegiance, then, of course, you have to give way from the party which you would have left. And this is part and parcel of the problem that you have,” Dr. Douglas said.
Dr. Douglas explained that regardless of a country’s system of government, all cabinet members are bound by the doctrine of collective responsibility.
“A lot of people don’t seem to understand the difference between our system of government and maybe what will be the other systems of government. But in any system of government, let me emphasise, where there is a cabinet, no matter whether it is a communist system, whether it is a democratic system, once you are a member of a cabinet you are bound by the doctrine of collective responsibility. And once you have that responsibility, you would give way to your personal position because of the collective position of others who are with you. Then, of course, you are adhering to the doctrine. But once you are refusing to adhere to the urgings of the majority in a collective responsibility and you have your own urging or personal conviction, you are right so to do but you must leave, you must resign from the cabinet…and this happens in any system of government where you have a cabinet.”
“The decent and the right thing for anyone to do is to resign from the government, resign from the cabinet and then pursue your own personal mandate. And if you don’t resign, you’re going to be ejected. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot be part of a cabinet and frustrate the wishes of the majority of the cabinet members and you would want to pursue your own minority position for whatever reason.”
He continued: “It might be as you said, your constituents have urged you so to do, but if your constituents urged you so to do then you must bear the consequences and leave the cabinet and let your constituents know that they would have no kind of representation from the cabinet level. They will have the representation in the parliament, but they cannot continue to have representation at the cabinet level from a minister of government. And people need to understand these basic differences here.”
The Prime Minister also said that anyone is free to criticise the government, but when the government, as a cabinet, sets out a policy position that goes to parliament for implementation and one of its members speaks out against it, that member should no longer be a part of the cabinet.
“People need to understand that this has nothing to do in the violation of one’s own personal conviction or one’s own right as an individual, but, of course, it has something to do with party discipline. It has to do with the doctrine of collective responsibility that cannot be simply pushed aside in the democratic system of government that we are pursuing here in St. Kitts and Nevis. And that is what everybody is saying; this does not really need this kind of confusion. If you have a member of the cabinet who feels strongly on a position that his other cabinet colleagues are equally strongly in favor of, then you do the decent thing,” he added.
In recent times there has been a rift between Dr. Douglas and two of his most senior Ministers of Cabinet, Deputy Prime Minister Sam Condor and Dr. Timothy Harris, who had openly criticised some of the policies in which the Cabinet wished to implement, with the most recent being the Senators (Increasing of number) Bill 2012.
