Nevis: Premier of Nevis and the leader of Concerned Citizens Movement Mark Brantley lambasted NRP for their hypocrisy in the past several years and stated they had berated the CCM and its candidates for seeking both local and federal seats.
Read Here: Full statement of Premier Mark Brantley
The NRP has condemned this perfectly constitutional and perfectly proper approach by the CCM as immoral, unethical, reprehensible and every other derogatory word that can be imagined. The NRP campaigned daily that it was impossible for any one person to do two jobs. The NRP took to every media outlet to condemn the CCM candidates whom the people of Nevis elected overwhelmingly for being legally paid for their local and their federal ministerial portfolios.
So convinced was the NRP of the correctness of their position that they boldly amended their Constitution to prevent any candidate for the NRP from offering him or herself in both local and federal elections.
The NRP felt that their incessant cursing about how wrong it was to offer the same candidate for both federal and local elections would pressure the CCM to do likewise. But the CCM has, since the earliest days of the late great Vance Amory, ran its best team both federally and locally.
Vance ran both. The late great Malcolm Guishard ran both. Jean Harris ran both. Mark Brantley runs both. Alexis Jeffers runs both. Eric Evelyn runs both.
In fact the NRP used to do the same and our national hero Sir Simeon Daniel ran both. The late Ivor Stevens ran both. Joseph Parry ran both. Patrice Nisbett ran both. Hensley Daniel ran both. Evansville Hector ran both.
We in the CCM always knew that this hullabaloo from the NRP had absolutely nothing to do with any genuine commitment on their part to some principle. It was a contrivance designed only to give them a talking point to attack the CCM.
So fast forward to 2021. The NRP publicly launched its full slate of candidates for the local elections in Nevis. All 5 were announced. Now 2022 and a Federal election looms and the NRP has shocked everyone and in violation of its own amendment to its Party constitution, it is now running 3 of the same 5 candidates that they have already put forward for the local election. Absolute utter and unadulterated hypocrisy. Suddenly it’s not immoral and reprehensible anymore. Suddenly the 2 salary story is no longer relevant. Suddenly those in the NRP can do 2 jobs.
The question that we must ask is this: After the constant attacks on the CCM over fielding the same candidates for both local and federal
Elections, how can the NRP do the very thing they have so vociferously condemned?
Of course, they are now spinning. Oh, they didn’t have enough time to find federal candidates. Oh, those who stepped forward as federal candidates were not able. Oh, if they win, they plan to take the federal salary but no federal portfolio, so they can focus on Nevis. But the best-attempted spin thus far is that since none of them holds a local seat, then their Constitution doesn’t prevent them from running federally.
Below is a copy of the relevant provision in the NRP constitution. If you read the highlighted portion, you will realize that the NRP declaration of 3 federal candidates whom they have also declared publicly as local candidates are violently and flagrantly in breach of the very Constitution of the NRP Party. The highlighted portion allows the NRP to select candidates:
“provided that no person shall be recommended to serve as a member of both the National Assembly and the Nevis Island Assembly at the same time”
This is most categorically NOT the type of leadership that we can trust and that is why the people of Nevis are saying with one accord that they are voting CCM and Increasing the Momentum.
