St. Kitts and Nevis is blessed with natural beauty, says Danny Glover, hails the Federation’s ‘high income country’ status

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, JANUARY 10TH 2013 (CUOPM) – American actor, producer and humanitarian, Danny Glover, says the recent upgrading of St. Kitts and Nevis from a “middle-income” to a “high income” country is a clear indication that it is neither land mass, natural resources, population nor any other specific factor that determines a country’s social economic ranking.

“Instead it is some complex combination of educational attainment, infrastructural development, societal mind-set, governance and political will; that is the key,” said Glover, a guest speaker at last Saturday’s 11th Annual Prime Minister’s New Year’s Gala.

Congratulating his host, St. Kitts and Nevis’ Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas on this achievement, the Glover, who has been a commanding presence for more than 25 years said “there is no denying the value of social and economic stability, but at the same time, while I commend you however, I must challenge you as well and I say this because from whom much is given, much is expected.”

Photos by Erasmus Williams

“And so even if St. Kitts and Nevis is spared the humiliation of being classified as least developed, under developed or marginally developed, or all the other disparaging labels that are affixed to many countries, you must also ask yourself as a nation and as a people, what are the new demands of this status?,” Mr. Glover asked.

He said St. Kitts and Nevis is blessed by a natural beauty that can only be described as exquisite and inhabited by people who have more than once, staked out the high ground in transformative regional history with the declaration of a high income nation.

“That almost frightening, when you consider that your entire population is smaller than the number of students at many major American universities and it is also a little frightening when you consider that most members of this high club has population in the millions and billions. But here is little St. Kitts and Nevis in the Big Boys Club as they say,” said Glover, who disclosed that it was not his first visit to the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

“Actually this is my third visit to St. Kitts and Nevis. But even beyond that I have a very fragile connection with St. Kitts and Nevis. In 1982, as a struggling actor in Los Angeles, California; I was in the second cast; it was more often referred to, in our world as the Standing, for a play for a very famous play write from St. Kitts and Nevis Steven Carter. The play was called Nevis Mountain Dew; the play was about rum, the truth telling rum. I looked on Wikipedia this afternoon as I refreshed my memory about the play. That time they listed, the New York Class, the Washington D.C class and the L.A class, but as an understudy, my name was not mentioned in there. So if it is one of things you may know is that I did have a relationship with St. Kitts and Nevis more than thirty years ago.”