By Charles Jong | PR Consultant

Forty-eight days after the passage of the St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank Vesting of Certain Lands Bill, the absence of Opposition Members Shawn Richards, Eugene Hamilton, Mark Brantley, and Vance Amory during the voting for or against the Bill, is still haunting them.

The only Opposition Member who remained in the Parliament Chamber during the vote was Senator Vincent Byron, who could not vote on the Bill. His body language and appearance clearly portrayed a man who was bitter that his elected colleagues had left the Assembly before voting on the Bill, especially after his colleague Eugene Hamilton stated during the debate, that he would call for a divisional vote.

Richards, PAM's new leader, has come under heavy criticism for his poor excuse for not remaining in Parliament to register his disapproval of the Bill. "The only time your opposition or disapproval is registered is when it comes time to vote. Mr. Richards failed me as a supporter of his, when he left the Parliament before voting on the Bill. I see him liming and drinking on Port Zante and that is fine but when it comes to the people's business, which he is getting paid to do, he should have stayed in Parliament and voted against the Bill that he said he opposed," cited one B. Manners.

Forty-eight days since the Bill was passed and is now law, Mark Brantley who gave very lame excuses for his absence which included that he had to return to Nevis to be with his family and that he could not afford to pay for a hotel and stay in St. Kitts that night, did not go down well with citizens.

Every resident of Bath, Brown Hill, Brown Pasture, and Cox in Nevis knew that Mr. Brantley did not tell the truth. His explanation for not staying to vote on the Bill was as a result of him coming under heavy public criticism for not registering his vote against the Bill.

"Mr. Brantley lied! He is always in St. Kitts at the Marriott liming with women who are not his relatives and I don't know how his wife could tolerate that. He was recently at a high-end restaurant in St. Kitts with one of those women and Wednesday night he checked into the Marriott again. There was no Parliament then, so how he could be so wicked and bad?" Those were the sentiments of one on-looker.

Mr. Brantley's latest wiggle in an attempt to wiggle out of the hot topic was to say that it was a Government Bill and implied that he was not responsible for the Bill and appeared to be suggesting that he did not need to remain in Parliament to vote against it. But what Mr. Brantley failed to understand, was that 99.99% of the Bills brought to the Parliament are brought to the Parliament by the Government so it is not clear what he meant.

Mr. Brantley therefore seems to have wiggling himself deeper into the quicksand.

Since the passage of the Bill, the Right Honourable Prime Minister has commenced a public awareness campaign to inform nationals about the areas that have been placed into the SPV. Prime Minister Douglas' public awareness events have also provided information about lands that are still available in all of the villages around the island for the expansion of housing, farming, and commercial development.

By and large, nationals who attended the public awareness events of the Prime Minister, have not really expressed dissatisfaction with the Government's strategy to reduce the national debt. The only exception was in Lodge, where approximately five individuals were obviously coached, rehearsed, and staged questions that were given to them by 'see thru' people who are upset with themselves over the immense popularity of the Right Honourable Prime Minister.

Labour Parliamentarian and Minister, the Honourable Marcella Liburd, spoke at two of the three public awareness events thus far. Minister Liburd did not mince her words. Her message was plain and simple: "criticism is not a strategy; it is not an alternative solution to choose from."

Public participation in the public awareness events continues to grow. While the first event had only six persons asking questions, the second and third saw nine and twelve respectively. And the majority of the issues being raised by participants have been local representative issues such as pleas for job creation, pleas for representation in job termination disputes, asking for green space to be kept clean, questions about pending applications for land to develop for commercial purposes, and the list goes on.

The political fall-out that PAM Leader Shawn Richards, Official CCM Leader Vance Amory, defacto CCM Leader Mark Brantley, and Eugene Hamilton continue to suffer as a result of their failure to be present in Parliament during the vote on the Bill, will undoubtedly continue to haunt them in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

They are reminded that "silence" in Parliament means consent!

Basic rules of Parliamentary procedure dictate that Members who abstain (choose not to vote) actually agree to go along with the decision of the majority by their silence. A majority means "the majority of Members voting"; abstentions do not count in the total vote count.

Talk is cheap!

The Honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Mark Brantley was the first Opposition Member of the Assembly to debate the Bill. He spoke for one hour and two minutes and repeated over and over that the Government was disposing of 1,200 acres to retire a large portion of the country's national debt. Mr. Brantley tried very hard to portray how bad a Bill it was but you know what? He failed in his 62-minute speech to say whether he supported or opposed the Bill.

The second Opposition Member to debate the Bill was PAM's Representative for Constituency #8, the Honourable Eugene Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton, spoke longer and arguably in stronger terms than Brantley. Hamilton spoke for one hour and six minutes. PAM's Deputy Leader stated in his 66-minute speech that he would ask for a 'division vote' but he failed to say whether he supported or opposed the Bill.

When there is a division vote, each Member of Parliament would be asked to indicate whether they support (Aye) or oppose (No) the question to the Parliament, in this case the Bill.

The third Opposition Member to participate in the debate was PAM's Representative for Constituency #5, the Honourable Shawn Richards. Mr. Richards spoke for one hour and 18 minutes but he failed in his 78-minute speech to say whether he supported or opposed the Bill. The best he could do was say, "today is a sad day."

The fourth Opposition Member to debate the Bill was PAM's Senator, Vincent Byron, who spoke for one hour and 16 minutes. Byron, like his colleagues, failed in his 76-minute speech to indicate whether he supported or opposed the Bill. Byron was the only Opposition Member to stay until the vote was held at approximately 11 and a half hours into the Sitting.

The fifth Member of the Opposition, Nevis' former Premier and now lame-duck CCM leader, although present for most of the day, did not participate in the debate on the Bill.

The bottom line: after four hours and 42 minutes of debate from the Members of the Opposition bench, none of the Opposition Members indicated whether they would vote to support or oppose the Bill.

The bottom line: not one of the Members of the Opposition bench voted against the Bill. Yet for some strange reason, two or three reporters decided to focus solely on two out of the seven Members of Parliament who were not present during the vote.

The seventh Member who was absent at the vote was Labour's Representative for Constituency #2, the Honourable Marcella Liburd. Ms. Liburd traveled to Barbados that same day to appear at an Independence event amongst Kittitian and Nevisian students there.

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