Fellow citizens and residents:
The Christmas season is an extra special time for the people of St. Kitts and Nevis. This is when we celebrate the birth of Christ. This is when families come together and many of us are reunited with family and friends who live abroad. This is when we celebrate carnival, our main traditional event.
The Christmas season is also a time of love, compassion, sharing and caring. It is our Kittitian and Nevisian “Thanksgiving”.
While we embrace the Christmas spirit and join in the revelry, the harsh realities of 2016 and the uncertainty of 2017 are not lost on us as a people.
The year 2016 has been a particularly difficult one for the people of St. Kitts and Nevis especially the most vulnerable among us. We have seen our quality of life eroded, hundreds of workers dismissed, demoted or discarded, consistent attempts to stifle free speech, rising cost of living through increased taxes and fees, serious dysfunction in government especially in the education of our children, the delivery of health care and the lack of leadership in National Security. We have too often witnessed the blatant disregard for human life with increasing invasions to person and property.
Too many families are mourning the tragic loss of loved ones through acts of violence. In particular we are losing our young men whose talent could be better used to build our developing country. We understand (first hand) the feeling of being invaded and the plight of those who suffer the trauma and uneasiness of being unsafe and uncomfortable in their own homes.
Even though the outlook for 2017 may be uncertain and unsettling we can reach out to one another, our neighbours, our children, our young people for strength to persevere. It is only by coming together and listening to each other that we will find solutions to many of the problems that we face today.
To all my constituents, the good people of Central Basseterre, to my family and friends and indeed to all the people of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis I wish you a joyous, Christ-filled Christmas and a healthy, productive 2017.
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