BASSETERRE, St Kitts, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas says he has asked Governor General Sir Cuthbert Sebastian to dissolve Parliament, but is still keeping the date for the much anticipated general election in St Kitts and Nevis a guarded secret.
In a nationwide radio and television broadcast on Tuesday night, Douglas said he had asked the head of state to dissolve the Parliament “with immediate effect, in order that we may prepare the way for the general elections that we have all been so eager to hold”.
The Prime Minister said that in the “weeks ahead” he would be announcing the date “on which we will all go to the polls to decide in whose hands we shall place the future of St. Kitts & Nevis” and dismissed suggestions by the main opposition People’s Action Movement (PAM) that his administration had been reluctant to hold the polls before an adjustment had been made to the some of the constituency boundaries.
“The people of St. Kitts & Nevis have delivered massive victories to the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party based on these boundaries,” and as a result “my government had no reluctance, and has no reluctance, in going to the polls on the existing boundaries”.
“We can, however, wait no longer. As we speak, our sincere attempts to create more equitable constituencies remain before the Courts, compliments of the PAM. And so, we approach new elections just as we emerged from the last one – with the PAM attempting to frustrate the people’s business and frustrate confusion via the courts, and the Government attending to the people’s business”.
Douglas insisted that following the last general elections, the Commonwealth monitors had made a number of recommendations including the adjustment to the boundaries, but that the efforts to do so had been frustrated by legal action taken by the opposition party.
“There was an inequity to be fixed, we had determined that we would do all in our power to fix it in the best interest of our nation, and that is what we were committed to do,” Douglas said, adding that he has been informed that the Commonwealth, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Organization of American States (OAS) “have again accepted my invitation to observe our national elections.
“It is my fervent hope that when the Commonwealth Expert Team comes in to observe the elections, there will be no “blame game” on the part of PAM,” he said in the broadcast.
Douglas, who is seeking an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in office, said that his government has worked very hard to be worthy of the trust and confidence placed in it by the electorate.
“We have, in many ways, done the impossible on behalf of the people of St. Kitts & Nevis. At a time of real and frightening global economic turmoil, we have kept this tiny country, little more than a dot on the world map, but a place that you and I know to be rich with history, with character, and with potential, not only afloat, but thriving.”
“Fellow, citizens, your Labour government has delivered. We have met the task at hand. Indeed we have gone the extra mile – because we believe and we know that that is what we, the people of St. Kitts & Nevis, deserve.”
“I believe that the journey that we have travelled together, thus far, makes a convincing case that St. Kitts-Nevis is now in competent and visionary hands; and this, we know, is exactly what is needed in these rather trying and challenging times,” he said, making an appeal for his party to be returned to office.
Under the constitution, the Prime Minister has 90 days following the dissolution of Parliament to call a general election.
