I have just decided that I won’t be voting when the next elections come around. It will be the first time since I was 21 that I won’t be casting a vote for the candidate of my choice in a general election. I’ve never voted in a bye-election. I’ve never had that opportunity.
Throughout my fairly long life I have voted for various candidates. My first vote was in 1958 for Bradshaw and Liburd, candidates for the West Indies Federation Government.
Then it was for Glasford in New Town against Kennedy Simmonds, I think I voted twice for Glasford and once for Southwell against Simmonds.
In 1975 I changed my vote from Southwell to Simmonds in protest against the Labour Party. I was then a candidate for PAM against my friend St. John but I did not vote in Molineux where I was a protest candidate. I voted in Newtown for Simmonds against Southwell.
After Mr. Southwell died and Lee Moore called an election in 1980, I voted in New Town again for William Dore against Michael Powell.
In 1984 I moved my name from New Town to Tabernacle and I voted for St. John Payne but he lost by a small margin to Roy Jones. In 1989 I tried again and he lost again.
Even though I moved back to Basseterre, I kept my name on the Tabernacle list and have voted since 1993 for Timothy Harris. Whenever there was an election, right up to 2004, I have driven over to Taba to register my vote for Timothy.
I have been a supporter of the Labour Party all my life except for the period of aberrant protest from 1974 to 1978 when I edited the Democrat newspaper and wrote regular criticisms of the way Robert Bradshaw and Fitzroy Bryant ran the politics of St. Kitts-Nevis.
An important factor in my attitude to the Labour Party in that period was its policy regarding the Nevis quest for separation and its dogged reluctance to dismantle the Sugar Industry which was becoming an increasingly heavy albatross around our national neck.
In 1975, Bradshaw actually sought a mandate to deny Nevis their independence and to make the sugar industry into a government enterprise I disagreed with Bradshaw on both counts and joined the Peopples Actoin Movement (PAM).
I later decided that leaving the party and joining the rival party in protest was wrong for me. Since I was not in pursuit of political office, I could remain in my original party and criticize it from the fringes.
During Lee Moore’s brief office as leader of the party and premier, he invited me back to the party and co-opted me to its executive committee. I attended one or two meetings. On the Cast one when I tried to make an input in a discussion I raised the hackles of Halva (Chinee) Hendrickson, who was also a member of this body.
Halva went on bad. He stuttered and stammered as he angrily rebutted the point I had made and then he turned on me personally, challenging my presence at the meeting.
As I sat in amazed in uncomfortable silence, my friend Lee Moore came to my rescue, patiently explaining that I was there in accordance with the party’s policy to co-opt members who were deemed to have something to offer to the committee’s deliberations. I was not the only person so co-opted. Dr. Cuthbert Sebastian was also co-opted but I guess he had more sense than I, and diplomatically stayed away.
I was so afraid of Chinee’s stammering tongue that I stayed away from any further meetings and have since contributed to the well being of the Labour Party by my regular comment on of their political practices which I deem to be worth a criticism.
Being uncommitted to any pledge of collective responsibility my chosen activity serves both the public and myself well, since it allows me full freedom to express myself on any matter and it gives the public the full benefit of my untainted and unbiased point of view.
It also serves the party well. It offers the leaders fulsome advice which competes with that which they get from self-serving hangers-on and carpet-baggers. Having no personal axe to grind and no outstretched hand for personal gain, I can offer harsh criticism which they might easily resent but yet find acceptable.
And I remain with the party, hoping that it would correct any waywardness and always keep itself mindful of its duty to serve all the people of St. Kitts.
But I may not be voting this time. Why? Because I have two American sons and six American daughters who will come on election day and cast my vote for me. They are eight to one.
If all of these sons and daughters are coming home to vote, why do I have to bother? My vote does not count, if they are coming to vote for PAM, they outnumber me 8 to 1 so why do a have to bother? If they are coming to vote for Labour, their eight votes are more than my one. My single vote will be superfluous.
My eight sons and daughters left St. Kitts to live in the USA because St. Kitts did not offer them the opportunities which they sought.
They left St. Kitts when PAM was in power because although they had done everything right academically, they were not considered for higher education. They served as teachers, did their ‘A’ levels, all to no avail. One of them even came first at the Teachers’ College and though it was the policy to send the top graduate to UWI, this poor child was methodically overlooked. Another one won a Carnival Queen crown, won the Miss Caribbean crown, and then had to join her sisters in New York where they worked and paid for college education.
The truth is they owe this island nothing. They hold high profile middle class jobs in the United States, they have their children, born in the United States, and they own property in the United States. They have a vote in the United States.
Their only interest in St. Kitts is that they have their father here. So why should anybody expect them to come and get themselves involved in homeland politics? It is true they were born here, but they did not live here. Here is not their home. They neither suffer nor prosper here. So why should they come here to vote? The politics here do not affect them in any way.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my children and they love me. I am proud of them for the fighting spirit which drove them to become successful and happy people. Like most parents I could not afford to send them to college, they could only have got there through scholarships or loans. St. Kitts gave them neither of these. They found their pot of gold in the United States. It is to the United States that they owe their debts of gratitude. It is in their adopted country where they are citizens and enjoy many rights including the right to vote.
Citizens of the United States, my eight children included, have no rights to vote here except those which they are offered by contrivance. Their only motive to come here to vote is the fun trip which they will enjoy at the expense of those of us who live here.
Their exercise of the franchise in this distant part of their existence is hurtful to the people who live here. It is these people ,people like me who live here who must assess the performance of the parties which they are asked to elect. Not people who have lived in the outer world for 20-30 years
As long as citizens of the United States, Canada, and Bermuda, Britain who were once born in St. Kitts are allowed to vote in St. Kitts, the general election will become a contest not between the people most affected by the local policies and promises, but by the whims of air borne citizens criss-crossing the Atlantic skies.
In such a contest local residents like me can sit back and wait the outcome by those expatriates who outnumbered us eight to one.
