St. Kitts & Nevis - January 17, 2010 (WINN):  With just a week to go to polling day, the St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party and the People's Action Movement are trading accusations of corruption. 

People's Action Movement Leader Lindsay Grant says that the Prime Minister has accumulated an inexplicable amount of property and money while in office.

"He only works for $17,000 a month...which means that for the fifteen years he's been in office, he only would have earned a maximum of $3.6 million, but yet in June of last year he went over to Calypso Bay and bought a house for  $1.2 million US dollars!" Grant said at a recent public meeting.

T he PAM Leader said that that was equal almost to what he had earned over the past fifteen years, and charged that the Prime Minister had an additional fifteen properties.

"You wonder where he get the money from!" he cried.

"You see these are the critical issues that we face in this country.  I don't mind if he got twenty million or twenty five, but he must earn it...working as the servant of the people."

There has been no direct response to the allegations, but the Labour Party has accused Mr. Grant of negotiating a bribe at a secret meeting at a hotel in St. Kitts.

"This is the man who is professing to become the leader of this country, discussing in an open room, according to him how he will receive a bribe of 17 million dollars in order to undersell 200 acres of...government land at Brothersons," Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas said at a recent party rally.

"But you see what happening?  Lindsay is aware that he's losing these elections.  Lindsay has become very desperate for money!"

At a PAM rally Grant told his supporters that he had attended a meeting with a man who tried to bribe him and he reported the matter as a trap set by the Labour Party.

Photo: PAM Leader Lindsay Grant (left) and Prime Minister Denzil Douglas(right)