The presenter’s message was to the effect that a lady in Cotton Ground had some puppies dumped by her doorstep, and she did not know what to do with them as they were getting hungry, or something to that effect. He used the power of the radio to make an appeal to anyone who would want to take the puppies to come forward.
Later in the programme, he announced that he had received some calls from persons wanting to take the puppies. A job well done, I will say. Towards the end of his programme, the presenter said that he had even received a call from someone I believe it was from the USVI or the BVI, I cannot remember which one, saying that he too wanted a puppy.
On Sunday morning someone told me that one of the top CCM men had announced on Saturday night (October 20) that Nevis was going to set up a breeding station where pedigree dogs would be raised and exported to wherever. I dismissed that and told my informer that even though I was not a supporter of the CCM, I would not stoop as low as to swallow such trash.
Those rumours persisted even on Monday, but I honestly did not pay much attention to them. I was however rattled Tuesday morning, when Chef Waltie came on radio (yes, the power of radio!) on Breakfast Menu and put hard evidence on the table. Was Chef Waltie pedalling trash as well? No, Chef Waltie comes with hard, cold facts that no one can deny.
The Nevis Reformation Party-led Nevis Island Administration has been working hard to open new frontiers to allow for our young people to get decent jobs, but the CCM has shot down those ideas at every turn.
Were persons affiliated to the CCM not involved in frustrating the efforts of having the Pinney’s project take off? What did they do with the geothermal project? When the NRP went to a major lending institution looking for funds, they went to same institution to say don’t give the money.
What about the fisheries project? One of their ranks said (and even put in writing and copied to foreigners who are funding it) that he was going to frustrate the project. What about the oil storage facility? They say it is going to kill we people because Nevis has lightning and hurricanes.
Opposition is deemed honourable when it comes with ideas that would be better than those brought to the table by the government. Now, let us look at what the CCM’s offers after it opposes what the NRP is bringing to the table.
At a public meeting held at Brick Kiln Village on Saturday October 20, the leader of the party, the Hon Vance Amory took to the platform to lament that Nevis’ young people are sitting idle as there were no jobs. He offered to put up “a decent five star or four star or just a good quality hotel.”
Fourteen years in government from 1992 to 2006 the CCM did not bring any hotel to Nevis, and now that they are in opposition the Hon Vance Amory, elected member for Gingerland, is offering “just a good quality hotel.” How many of those youths will be offered jobs in that hotel?
Leader of the CCM appears not to have heard from this radio station the previous day how fast dogs move, but if he did he must have understood that the Cotton Ground lady was giving them out for free.
I am not saying that his deputy, the Hon Mark Brantley, was acting on the information that dogs move fast from the radio’s service announcement the previous day, but what he offered as an alternative to the projects he has opposed left me puzzled.
He had news for those idle youth his boss had talked about: Dog farming for export. Yes, that is what the Hon Mark Brantley said. Was he saying that was a safer alternative to geothermal and the oil storage facility? I will agree with him, if he will assure me that those dogs he talked about are very docile, that they cannot even harm a fly.
He told the people who were listening to him at Brick Kiln and on the radio and over the internet, that he was going to start a niche industry for Nevis, one nobody had ever done in the Caribbean: Breeding pedigree dogs in Nevis for export. He said if one wanted a Shepherd (I believe he meant German Shepherd) or a Rottweiler, you get them “right here in Nevis”.
That is economic development for Nevis according to the Gospel of Mark (AD 2012).
Let us not dismiss it for the sake of opposing what the opposition is offering to the good people of Nevis. How many people would a dog farm employ? Or is he suggesting several farms one of them for each of the five parishes? Even at five for the island, still let him tell us how many would be offered jobs.
Has the Hon Mark Brantley done a feasibility study to find out which countries will be buying the dogs from Nevis? What is the life span of a dog? Unlike chickens which when you raise them they are eaten and the need for more increases, when you sell a dog, how long will it take before that person needs a replacement?
The dogs he talked about are very dangerous animals. I do not want to be accused of being a scaremonger and would ask any well meaning person to check on the internet, or even with friends, to find out how much deaths these dogs have caused even to their owners.
Assuming that the Mark Brantley project will be built in a way that these dogs cannot break out to kill innocent Nevisians, has he taken into account that Nevis experiences hurricanes which bring down the strongest of the buildings. Will the kennels for those dogs be hurricane proof? What will happen to our people when those dogs are set loose through the act of a hurricane, or even an earthquake?
Lord have mercy on we Nevis people if all the CCM can offer is breeding of pedigree dogs for export. If he had proposed that they will breed the dogs on Booby Island, I would kind of supported him because I do not oppose for the sake of opposing. Nevis needs the foreign exchange.
On the other hand, it appears to me that the CCM is running scared since Premier of Nevis the Hon Joseph Parry made it clear that when Nevisians go back to the polls, it will be a full election for the Nevis Island Assembly.
In the St. James area, the Hon Alexis Jeffers has gone on radio to suggest that the voters’ list in his area is being padded. His leader the Hon Vance Amory appears to have agreed with him as they sat on the same show when Jeffers made the claims. Mark Brantley alluded to it at Brick Kiln.
I am not calling any one stupid, but certainly I am saying that they are making very stupid claims. The Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis issues biometric passports. Hon Alexis Jeffers, who was sitting with the Hon Vance Amory said that there were passports being issued from a house in St. James and also in St. Maarten.
For Jeffers to go on radio to make those claims, I would simply request the Commissioner of Police to look into those allegations and bring out to the open the people who have the expertise to make and print biometric passports of St. Kitts and Nevis in St. James as claimed.
What does Hon Jeffers mean by saying that the list is being padded? Isn’t human growth dynamic? Does he have a barometer which would point as to when the population of a parish would grow? And if he is suggesting that those are illegal names on the voter’s list, does he not have the constitutional authority to object to them?
Why is Hon Jeffers not telling the world that he has simply lost ground after the NRP objected to eighteen persons on the list, of which Hon Jeffers contested to only three? What was the outcome? Sixteen of those objections were allowed and only two were not allowed, which translates in simple arithmetic: NRP – 16, CCM – 2.
Hon Jeffers is losing ground because he is aware that the NRP has gone through the voters’ in St. James and has successfully objected to names of those that were illegally registered. Why didn’t Jeffers contest the fifteen? Because he knew they did not live in St. James. But, did he know that they would have voted him in 2011?
Voter padding accusations remind me of wild claims that had been made by another CCM politician prior to the July 2011 elections to the effect that the voters’ list in St. John’s had been padded. I believe they even said that those persons were being registered as being residents of Cherry Garden.
That was a most ridiculous pronouncement from a politician who should have known better that the nearly over 120 houses in Cherry Garden had been built during the period 2006 to 2011 and that human beings had bought them. Didn’t those people have the right to register in St. John’s?
But here is the mother of all ironies! The CCM has been going for vote hunting at Cherry Gardens. Does it mean that the voters’ list was not padded after all? And when they held a press on conference on Monday October 15, they said that they had instituted criminal charges against six persons who had registered in St. John’s illegally.
They gave the names of those six persons, and where they thought they live. One that caught my attention was that of a Ms Sigrid Lorraine Hamilton of Buckley’s in St. Kitts. I say it caught my attention because they say she was from St. Kitts.
But on Friday October 19 at another press conference they apologised to Ms Sigrid Hamilton, saying that they had withdrawn the charges against her. Why did they do it? Because whether she was from St. Kitts or not, had they established if she had a right to be registered in St. John’s?
If she has property in Nevis, or simply lives in Nevis, whether she is originally from St. Kitts or not, that was not enough reason to criminalise her action of registering in St. John’s. Was, therefore, her name one of those they had talked of having been put on the list to pad it?
Ms Hamilton, sincere apologies to you from persons of goodwill.