Douglas Wattley says he will welcome law suit to  resolve allegations of unaccounted PLP campaign funds

Douglas Wattley says he will welcome law suit to  resolve allegations of unaccounted PLP campaign funds

 Basseterre, St. Kitts, March 26, 2018 – Douglas Wattley, former chairman of Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris’ Peoples Labour Party (PLP) has confirmed he has received a letter from a lawyer threatening legal action in relation to allegations of unaccounted campaign funds, he (Wattley) has been attempting to resolve.

“I said please go ahead for I want the matter straightened out as well. I had been charged with the responsibility of doing an investigation as the chairman,” said Douglas Wattley, who along with several founding and executive members were unceremoniously ousted from the PLP in March 2017.

In an appearance on the popular “Issues” programme on Freedom 106.5 FM, Wattley said he would welcome a civil suit from Prime Minister Harris as some people will have to be deposed to answer some questions under the penalty of perjury.

“That is what I want. If I am lying, depose me. If I am lying, put me in the box (witness stand) and I will answer questions. But you (Harris) will have to go in the box too. Other people will have to go in the box. The documentation will have to go in the box (submitted as exhibits and evidence) and be reviewed,” said Wattley.

He recounted that in December 2014, “a person close to the PLP leader called me to his residence and told me of somethings that he had observed which were troubling. These things left him visibly shaken. He was shaken. I am not asking you. I am telling you. I observed myself.  He did not tell me the details that day.”

“He wanted out of Team Unity. He did not want to be in it anymore. That was the beginning of the end of my relationship with PLP and the TUG – Team Unity Government,” said Wattley, who indicated that at a meeting he suggested that as the general elections was “about two months away I do not know what we can do at this point in time.”

Wattley said the scenario can be corroborated.

“He was so troubled that he went and looked for Dwyer Astaphan and told Dwyer the story. He told Dwyer even more than he had said to me. Dwyer asked him ‘Did you say this to Sam (Condor, former deputy prime minister who resigned after Timothy Harris was fired from the Labour Cabinet). He said ‘no. I really don’t know if Sam might be part of what he observed. Dwyer said ‘no. I can bet my life Sam ain’t going to be in nothing like that. Go ahead and talk to Sam, and so he went and he spoke. That is corroboration,” Wattley told listeners.

“Sam and Dwyer unbeknownst to me called a meeting with the PLP leader. They told me they broached the issue and he denied. They told him to declare the funds and let us move on. And he said he had done nothing,” Wattley stated in the interview.

He said they made several attempts to convene a meeting after the elections with now Prime Minister Harris.

“After the issue was raised, he stopped going by Sam. Did not want to do nothing with Sam anymore. Did not like Mrs. Condor anymore and stopped eating food from Mrs. Condor and began to watch Dwyer with a little cockeye,” said Wattley, who disclosed that he was not aware that both Sam and Dwyer had again raised the concern and was pursuing a resolution.

“After the elections, the issue flared up again internally and then I realised that was why we were being treated in a certain way by Dr. Harris. I was the chairman of the PLP and it was 45 days after Dr. Harris won that I got a call from him. He did not even give us an opportunity to say congrats. All we know is that we are now ostracised, but all that time I was not aware it was because of that matter.

“In talking, we realised that we are in for it because he done win. The man (Dr. Harris) got power now. We are now on the outside looking in and who are the ‘disaffected’ as he said in the recorded soundbite played on the programme? Those affected are me, Clecton (Phillip), Dwyer (Astaphan) and Sam (Condor). We are the ‘disaffected’ because we dare raise that issue. We dare raise that matter,” said Wattley.

During his press conference in April 217, Dr. Harris refused to touch the issue of unaccounted campaign funds stating the press conference was a government event and not a PLP function.

“For the record I am not entertaining that discussion. At an appropriate forum of the PLP, you could perhaps put that to the PLP. I am dealing here as the prime minister with matters relevant to the government and the accusation of members, whoever they are, of the PLP have no bearing on the functioning of this government and they are not matters that I raised or matters that I figure a press conference of the government should be diverted to,” prime minister Harris told local journalist Ken Richards.