St Kitts & Nevis: Prime Minister Denzil Douglas sidesteps motion of no confidence – insists his party ready for elections

St. Kitts & Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas

Embattled St. Kitts & Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas says his ruling St. Kitts-Nevis Labor Party (SKNLP) is prepared for a general election constitutionally due by 2015.

“The Labor Party stands ready to be prepared for any event electorally. We are a party established since 1932. We have been in government for the last 17 years after being able to defeat a 15 year opposition regime (PAM),” said Prime Minister Douglas, adding the SKNLP “has the confidence and the support of our people if we were to go into a general election, if they were to be called.

“We have made it absolutely clear the SKNLP would not lose any motion of no confidence in the Parliament and the Constitution gives us options which is why I am confident that we will not lose any motion of no confidence if it comes to the vote,” he said on his weekly radio programme “Ask the Prime Minister”. Douglas told listeners while he is confident “we will not lose that vote” the government also had other options.

Earlier this month, Opposition Leader Mark Brantley said he had written to the island-nations’ Governor General Sir Edmund Lawrence indicating that six of the 11 legislators in parliament no longer supported Douglas and called for the debate on the motion to be held without further delay. The move by the opposition leader, which also has the support of two former government ministers – former deputy prime minister Sam Condor and senior government minister Dr. Timothy Harris – is the latest strategy being employed to force the legislature to debate the motion of no confidence that the opposition said had been “duly submitted to the Clerk of the National Assembly since the 11th December 2012”.

Brantley said he was calling “on civil society to be vigilant and to continue to apply pressure to ensure that the democratic traditions we all hold sacrosanct are respected and restored”.

The St. Kitts & Nevis Chamber of Industry and Commerce and the churches have already called on the prime minister to ensure that the opposition inspired motion is debated soon. However, Douglas has insisted that his administration would not be rushed into debating the motion of no confidence and that the presentation of the national budget is a priority matter to be dealt with.

The prime minister, in his radio address, revealed that whenever the motion is debated, his administration would seek to convince legislators to support the government given its record of achievement. “This is not a Douglas thing. It is a government-cabinet thing. All of us contributed to where we are. Not one more than the other,” said Douglas, adding “this nonsense of trying to demonize the leader and blame him for everything that is not good, but taking the credit for them for whatever may have been good, is absolute hypocrisy as I’ve said in the past”.

He further said the that two former senior government ministers while indicating that they “are no longer with this Labor Party” and looking towards a unity government “I say to you…it will not get in because it is really a disunity government. “It is a government of convenience, where each man having his own little personal interest wants to sit together; but we have evidence of what happens in unity governments,” said Dr. Douglas, pointing to examples of recent unity governments in Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago. – (CMC)