In a fiery on-air radio address, Mahaut’s sitting Member of Parliament Kassani Laville has launched a full-throated rebuke of newly announced independent constituency candidate Gregor Nassief, painting the prominent local business leader as a privileged, disconnected outsider with no longstanding track record of grassroots contribution to the community he now seeks to represent.
Laville drew a stark, deliberate comparison between the decades-long embedded public service legacy of sitting Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and Nassief’s abrupt, last-minute entry into local electoral politics, framing the contest as a clear choice between earned, community-rooted leadership and opportunistic, wealth-fueled political ambition. “Representation is not a title you buy or claim on a whim when you decide you want a seat at the table,” Laville stressed during the broadcast. “Leadership is not a career promotion, and it is never a band-aid to fill a perceived power gap.”
To underscore his own deep ties to the Mahaut constituency, Laville pointed to his early years organizing local youth groups and his tenure as a founding member of the beloved Soca Strikers local football team, arguing that meaningful public service predates any run for public office. “Service does not begin the day you win an election, it starts right where you stand, long before you ever put up a campaign poster,” he noted. “Prime Minister Skerrit did not wake up the day he took office and decide he cared about Dominicans: that commitment was forged in decades of quiet, unglamorous work for communities across this nation.”
Turning his focus directly to Nassief’s corporate background, Laville alleged that the independent candidate’s entire electoral bid is motivated by personal grievances tied to Dominica’s Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program. He went on to warn local voters that Nassief had previously filed formal complaints and legal challenges that actively blocked economic opportunities for ordinary working Dominicans, framing the upcoming vote as a defining fork in the road for local governance. “We cannot allow a small group of private sector figures to try and run their businesses and run the government at the same time,” Laville asserted. “The people of Dominica have spent years reaping the benefits of the Dominica Labour Party’s track record of excellence and sacrifice for working families, and we cannot throw that away for the sake of a newcomer’s personal agenda.”
Laville went on to mock Nassief’s recent campaign walking tours across the constituency, claiming the wealthy businessman is so unfamiliar with Mahaut’s most basic neighborhoods that he relies on hired guides to navigate well-known residential areas including Jimmit and Campbell Road. The incumbent added that dozens of local residents and even senior public servants had reached out to him in recent weeks to express confusion at Nassief approaching lifelong community members to introduce himself as if they were strangers. He dismissed Nassief’s door-to-door efforts as nothing more than a performative “tourist parade,” noting that the candidate was entirely absent from community support efforts during the catastrophic Hurricane Maria crisis and subsequent periods of widespread economic hardship that left hundreds of local residents unemployed.
“The chasm between this candidate and the people of Mahaut could not be more obvious,” Laville said, adding that he had personally asked his own supporters to refrain from heckling Nassief during his public walks through local communities. “Deep down, every single resident here knows that the Dominica Labour Party exists to serve the people, not to help wealthy private figures advance their own business interests.”
DLP not a party for ‘how do I advance my company and my interests’: Laville blasts Nassief’s Mahaut candidacy
