St Kitts-Nevis PM: Last government ‘bought 8,000 cricket tickets with public money’

The previous government in St Kitts and Nevis has been accused of spending public money to win votes by the current administration.

Prime Minister Timothy Harris said that when his Team Unity coalition came to power in 2015 – after 20 years of the Denzil Douglas-led St Kitts and Nevis Labour Party leading the federation – they discovered that over 8,000 tickets for Caribbean Premier League cricket matches had been purchased in the run-up to the general election.

[caption id="attachment_4848" align="alignright" width="300"] Prime Minister Timothy Harris.[/caption] WIC News has been unable to independently confirm this claim, which allegedly would have cost the taxpayer more than US$73,000.

“When we came to office, the people at the CPL sent us an outstanding invoice from the office of the member for number six [Denzil Douglas] where he took… over 8,000 tickets for CPL, over 8,000 tickets for the CPL to give away to buy voters affection for the 2015 election [and] charged it to the public purse,” said Harris.

“This is misappropriation of the public purse for any government to take up public money, pick and choose who they will give money to go to the park to watch the CPL games and have it charged against the public purse.”

The introduction of the Public Accounts Committee, which was the subject of a new piece of law earlier this month, will bring the “sunshine of public scrutiny” on these issues, said Harris.

[caption id="attachment_1002" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Former prime minister and opposition leader Denzil Douglas.[/caption] WIC News has contacted Douglas and the St Kitts and Nevis Labour Party for a comment but have not received a response. WIC News has also asked a spokesman for the current prime minister if any money had been spent on similar items, including sporting tickets, since the 2015 election.

The response was that this information was unavailable at present.