Voters in St. Kitts and Nevis cast ballots in general elections focused on economy

St. Kitts voters cast ballots in early elections

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — Islanders voted Monday on whether to keep the ruling Labor Party in power for a fourth consecutive term in early parliamentary elections called by Prime Minister Denzil Douglas.

Lines formed at polling centers in churches and schools as voters cast ballots for a new 11-member Parliament in the two-island Caribbean nation. Police kept watch under rainy skies.

Campaigning in this tourism-dependent country of roughly 40,000 people, which has maintained friendly relations with the United States under Douglas, focused on the economy and government debt.

Douglas touted his administration’s efforts to boost the islands’ small economy, build roads and hospitals and continue paying the national debt despite the global economic crisis.

“It is important for me to state that St. Kitts and Nevis has never missed any payments on the national debt under Labor. This is very important. Many countries owe less, but are repeatedly unable to service their debt,” said Douglas, a physician who has been in office since 1995.

Harvard-educated lawyer Lindsay Grant, his rival in the opposition People’s Action Movement, criticized the government for letting debt spiral to about $2 billion and called Douglas out of touch with islanders.

“After 15 long years, Denzil Douglas and his band of rubber stamps are out of ideas,” Grant’s party said Monday in a statement.

The People’s Action Movement governed St. Kitts and Nevis from 1980 to 1995, when Douglas and Labor took power. Grant has led the main opposition party since 2000.

In the last vote, in 2004, Labor won seven of the eight seats allotted to St. Kitts in the Parliament and People’s Action got the other.

The Nevis-based Concerned Citizens Movement won two seats, and the Nevis Reformation Party took one.

Elections in the former British colony were not due until March.