BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, confident that his St Kitts Labour Party will win a third consecutive term, was expected to announce at a political rally last night an October 25 date for general elections, six months early of the poll’s due date.

“Our confidence for another landslide electoral victory has been further fortified by the report of a reputable pollster from Barbados that makes clear that only an earthquake could prevent us from a sweeping third term,” Douglas told the Observer in a telephone interview from Basseterre, the St Kitts capital, prior to addressing last night’s rally.

“I can tell you it is based on the political stability and economic management we have provided,” he added.

The opinion poll was conducted by University of the West Indies political scientist Peter Wickham for the St Kitts Labour Party (SKLP), which will publicise the results to coincide with the official launch of what is expected to be three weeks of intensive campaigning before election day.

Wickham is a director of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Research Services.

The main opposition People’s Action Movement (PAM) that led the country into independence in 1983 under the then leadership of medical doctor Kennedy Simmonds, is faced with an uphill struggle to recover from its humiliating defeat in the March 6, 2000 general elections at which it failed to win a seat in the 11-member House of Representatives.

Douglas’ SKLP captured all eight of the St Kitts constituencies, including that of Simmonds, who was recently knighted on Douglas’ recommendation.

While political observers view Simmonds’ knighthood as an election-winning strategy by Douglas, the prime minister said yesterday that it was partly in recognition of Simmonds’ role as the first prime minister of independent St Kitts and Nevis, and “my government’s policy to deal with the problem of political tribalism”.

The SKLP had secured its eight St Kitts seats with approximately 64 per cent of the valid votes to the PAM’s 35 per cent.

Neither the PAM nor the SKLP contested any of the three seats in St Kitts’ sister island Nevis where Premier Vance Amory’s Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) is again expected to retain majority control with two of the three seats. The Nevis Concerned Citizens Movement (NCCM) is likely to retain its one seat.

Although tension remains over St Kitts/Nevis governance relations during the SKLP’s second term, both Prime Minister Douglas and Premier Amory have succeeded in avoiding conflicts that at one stage made Nevis’ secession a very strong possibility.

Diffusing tension in relations with Nevis and keeping the lid on political and industrial unrest in St Kitts could be viewed in part to varying efforts by both the ruling SKLP and its major opponent the PAM.

However, both PAM leader Lindsay Grant, an attorney-at-law, and leader of the new and smaller United National Empowerment Party, Henry Browne, also a lawyer, have a tough job trying to convince the electorate of the need for a change in government at this month’s elections.

Prime Minister Douglas, who has responsibility among Caricom leaders for health issues, with special emphasis on efforts to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic, has credited St Kitts and Nevis’ improved rating on the United Nations Human Development Index to what he said was his government’s “progressive social and economic policies”.

The new rating – 39, up from 51 last year – has placed the twin-island state of some 38,700 people at the top of the scale among countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and second only to Barbados in the hemisphere.