BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – FORMER Minister of National Security and Parliamentary Representative for Central Basseterre, the Hon. Dwyer Astaphan is not in agreement with the delegation selected to accompany the Prime Minister at the upcoming Fifth Summit of the Americas.
According to a release today (Apr. 10) from the former Minister, Prime Minister Dr. the Hon. Denzil Douglas erred in the selection of his delegation and should have included Deputy PM the Hon. Sam Condor and Minister of Finance Dr. the Hon. Timothy Harris, among others.
Apart from the PM, other members of the delegation to the Summit are the Premier of Nevis, the Hon. Joseph Parry; Chief Secretary Joseph Edmeade; Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Astona Browne and St. Kitts and Nevis Permanent Representative to the OAS, His Excellency Dr. Izben Williams.
Astaphan insinuated that the delegation should not have included Edmeade and Browne. He however claims that Premier Parry and Dr. Williams are “appropriate selections”.
“Respectfully, I say that there is no need for Mr. Edmeade to be there and surely, the delegation will be able to do its work without the presence of Mrs. Browne.
“Mr. Sam Condor, our Federation’s Deputy Prime Minister, also a former Foreign Affairs and CARICOM Affairs Minister, and present Minister of Education, Labour, Youth etc., should have been in the delegation. His experience, seniority and his being the next in line as Prime Minister are sufficient to qualify him for the delegation,” he posited.
To strengthen his recommendation for the inclusion of Dr. Harris, Astaphan said, “He recently took over at the Ministry of Finance, in a time of extreme challenge locally, regionally, hemispherically, and globally, when meetings of this nature will inevitably include discussion of critical financial and fiscal importance.
“He is the immediate past Minister of Foreign Affairs and as such he enjoys much goodwill among his former colleagues and in the diplomatic community in the region and the hemisphere. And he would be on any reasonable person’s shortlist of future prime ministers at a time when succession to the nation’s top job has to be a matter of great interest, both in the Labour Party and our nation as a whole.”
Astaphan also saw the inclusion of the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Mark Brantley, or any other person nominated by the Concerned Citizens Movement; and the Hon. Shawn Richards, or any other nominee of the People’s Action Movement, even as observers to the Summit.
To justify his selection of Brantley and Richards, Astaphan said it should be done “given our critical need for national unity, and for greater maturity, magnanimity and statesmanship in all quarters of our political community, and also given the historic significance of the meeting (Mr. Obama as US President meeting with regional leaders for the first time, the world in its present state, etc.).
The Fifth Summit of the Americas will be held in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad from Friday, April 17 to Sunday, April 19, which will see US President Barack Obama attending his first Summit of Western Hemisphere Heads of State and Government.
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