ST JOHN’S – Celebrations to mark Sir Vere Cornwall Bird Sr day, to be observed on Wednesday, will again be boycotted by the main opposition United Progressive Party (UPP).
In a release issued on Monday, the opposition party said its central executive had unanimously decided against joining the ruling Antigua Barbuda Labour Party (ALP) in celebrating the public holiday.
This is the second consecutive year the party has refrained from participating in the ceremony which is held at Market Street in front of a statue of the country’s first premier.
The UPP said its stance is in protest of what opposition leader and former Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer terms “the relegation of King Court, Dame Nellie Robinson, Sir George H Walter, and our living National Hero, Sir Isaac Vivian Alexander Richards, to literal nothingness and insignificance”.
The UPP says it will continue to celebrate its “five recognised National Heroes” in wreath-laying ceremonies at the respective graves and monuments, as well as pay tribute to its living National Hero, on Wednesday, at the St John’s Public Cemetery.
When in power, the UPP administration renamed VC Bird Sr Day, calling it National Heroes Day, however, following the ALP’s victory at the polls last year, there was parliamentary reversal and VC Bird Sr Day was reinstated. (CMC)
