|
| Essentials • This Week's Paper • Advertise • More Sections: editorial | politics | columnists | letters |
|
| Top News > politics |
|
 |
7/24/2010 The Thinking Citizen In 1989 the PAM Government inherited all the Sugar Estates Lands that were acquired by the Labour Party Government. The PAM Party has always been claiming that its main interest is looking after the welfare of the poor landless workers. During the period 1980 to 1995 the PAM Government did little or nothing of consequence to help the poor landless worker. The PAM Ministers of Government took for themselves some of the best parcels of land on which to build their homes. Then the PAM Ministers rewarded their trumps, half-trumps and quarter-trumps with rather large tracts of land all across the island. The poor landless worker got nothing but promises. With the help of the Venezuelans the PAM Government built a number of substandard chicken-wire Low Income houses on Pond Estate, east of East Street. Also a number of sugar estate workers, men and women, received letters from the government notifying them that certain plots of land had been allotted to them. The letters were simply worthless pieces of paper of no legal or commercial significance. During the 1990s the PAM Government negotiated with a firm of Jamaican sugar producers for the sale of the Basseterre Sugar Factory and several hundred acres of prime sugar lands. PAM was willing to sell hundreds of acres of prime sugar lands to Jamaicans, but the same PAM was not willing to sell parcels of land to ordinary hard-working Kittitians and Nevisians. The PAM party invariably goes on the offensive whenever it is noised abroad that the present Labour Party Government is selling land to foreigners. But it should be noticed that the same PAM Government never made any fuss when the rich owners of land on the South-East Peninsula sold acres and acres of land to the oil-rich citizens of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. What is PAM’s policy on Land-use or land-distribution? PAM has no clearly defined policy. PAM makes a fuss whenever the present Labour Party Government sells land to foreigners. But PAM allowed private landowners to sell to foreigners and PAM itself was prepared to sell hundreds and hundreds of acres of sugar lands to Jamaicans. After PAM inherited the Sugar Estates Lands in 1980, the PAM Government went hog-wild and appropriated unto themselves and their friends and family, some of the choicest portions of sugar cane lands. No thought at all was given to the poor ordinary worker whose need for land far exceeded the need of the PAM Ministers and PAM trumps. But the PAMites who gave the Nation the motto “Country Above Self” sought first to satisfy their own selfish desire for land and completely ignored the cry for land that was coming from the poor landless worker. As Prime Minister Dr. Kennedy Simmonds was prepared to sell hundreds and hundreds of sugarcane lands to Jamaican investors. The current leader of PAM was also prepared to sell hundreds and hundreds of acres of sugar cane lands to an under-cover newspaper man. The behaviour of the former and the current leader of PAM show that regardless of the public protestations and propaganda of the party, PAM has not changed from the basic policies and ideologies instilled into the party by its founding fathers. According to newspaper reports the current leader of PAM was prepared to sell to the under-cover agent hundreds and hundreds of acres of sugar lands for less than the market value in exchange for a contribution of $1.7 million to Election campaign funds of the People’s Action Movement. Dr. Simmonds saw nothing that was wrong, immoral or unethical in the behaviour of the current leader of PAM. As a matter of fact in an address which Dr. Simmonds delivered at the recent PAM Convention he declared that the People’s Action Movement was in good hands. Sir Louis Blom-Cooper in his Commission of Inquiry Report made some scathing remarks concerning the behaviour of Sir Kennedy Simmonds as Prime Minister. Seeing that he was so rebuked in the Blom-Cooper Commission of Inquiry Report, it was expected that Sir Kennedy Simmonds would have taken Mr. Lindsay Grant, the current leader of PAM aside and privately exhort him to change his ways and follow the path of justice and righteousness. For it is clear to all persons of goodwill that Mr. Grant’s caper at the Marriott Hotel with the undercover agent was unprincipled, immoral, unethical and wrong. The lesson we have learnt from Mr. Grant’s caper at the Marriott and Sir Kennedy Simmonds’ condemnation of the caper is that the PAM Party will do anything at any time, regardless of how horrible or wretched, if it is believed that some short-term or long-term political gain or benefit would result. PAM’s policies and strategies are completely devoid of morals and ethics and this has been so ever since the party was formed in 1965. And this is why certain members of PAM found it so easy to conspire with Anguillans to overthrow by force of arms, the lawfully elected government of Premier Robert Bradshaw. That same lack of principle and moral values was what caused PAM in 1983 to tamper with our Electoral System and transform it into an arrangement designed to keep PAM in power indefinitely with the help of the NRP. |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Contact
Us | Privacy
Policy ©
2008 The Labour Spokesman