COMMENTARY
BASSETERRE St. Kitts – GREENLANDS PARK was packed from corner to corner last night (Wednesday June 19) with thousands who came to witness the historic inaugural meeting of the newly formed People’s Labour Party.
It was reminiscent of other times when crowds of similar numbers had gathered... and on each occasion the people had come together either to demonstrate a desire to take their country a step higher as was evidenced when in 1967 thousands attended the inaugural meeting of the People’s Action Movement; or they gathered to demonstrate pride in their country like in 1983 when the Independence flag was raised for the first time.
But this gathering on Wednesday night was even more historic in that it marked the emergence of a feeling of unity across Party lines...a consciousness that Party tribalism was futile and that the strength of Unity was needed to save the country and take it a step higher.
For the first time in the history of the country the people of the two major political parties met and mingled in common cause, outraged that in both camps life was becoming harder, while large sums of the country’s money were being channelled into projects that would not lift them from the low level status a colonial economy had bequeathed to them.
And while radio talk shows were still debating whether “old Labour” was “New Labour”, or whether it was possible to have two Labour parties, or even how PAM people felt about the new Party still being called a ‘Labour’ Party, the people in their wisdom realized that it was the actions coming out of the Party and not the name that mattered to their lives and to their children’s lives.
And while the Prime Minister ranted that the unity of the Parties was born out of desperation, he failed to realize that out of desperation the people had come to realize that their Parties were born of identical goals despite their separate origins.
For the slogan of the People’s Action Movement(PAM) –“Putting People First” embodied the same principle of “serving the working class people” that Trade Unions upheld as they evolved into becoming political parties.
The realization by the People that they were not being ‘served’ and that they were put ‘last’ when it came to the distribution of the country’s money brought about the consciousness that they had common problems. The People now came to see, as the saying goes, that “Unity in distress makes the trouble less”
In such situations, political barriers crumble and the strength that unity brings is deployed. This was strikingly evident at a major Women’s Unity Rally held on Monday June 17th when for the first time ‘cut-eyes’ and labels of ‘stinking PAM’ and stinking Labour’ were replaced by hugs and smiles as the women of the nation got together to strategize and make plans to improve their plight.
So even before the outcome of any election when political coalitions are hastily formed to oust any overbearing leader, the people are uniting and kicking aside political tribalism and colonial divisive tactics like ‘divide and rule’ in order to extricate themselves from the burdens placed upon them.
This is truly historic and in the same way that the Buckley’s Riots ushered in a phase of resistance throughout the region, it is possible that the consolidation of power via the Unity path of political parties may lead the Caribbean to rethink their two-party system and the hatred and mayhem that it usually breeds.
For, let us face it, Party ideologies in St. Kitts and Nevis are quite similar; there are no Communists vs Democrats; Lords vs Commoners; Conservatives vs Liberals; we do not even have Africans vs Indians,, and even if we did, we would now want the same things having been cultured into a Caribbean identity.
Presently our politics no longer bring out the ‘cut and thrust’ in the debating of political issues, but have deteriorated into name-calling (ah Hog dey be), money and food distribution prior to an election, the fashioning of temporary job programmes and the draining of well-needed funds squandered in transporting multiple plane loads of the diaspora to participate in a farcical electoral process.
For how long can our educated minds tolerate this charade as we lay our rational thoughts aside?
St. Kitts Nevis, as Mother Colony of the West Indies, has already carved out a history of resistance ... of which the Buckey’s Riots was regionally significant. The Brimstone Hill fortress, the Gibralter of the West Indies and the bastion of resistance was also, for some reason located here.
The clarion call at the launch of the People’s Labour Party was UNITY! And each time the word was shouted, the people responded with one voice...STRENGTH! The people and history will decide on this new and more acceptable path we are now forging.
The people demonstrated at Wednesday night’s meeting that they were ready for NEW BEGINNINGS and that Unity provides the pathway towards achieving it.
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