In a sharply worded public rejoinder targeting prominent public figure Kenny, former Dominica Association of Industry and Commerce (DAIC) executive Ivor Nassief pushes back against what he describes as evasive, meandering responses that prioritize political favor over substantive dialogue on critical national governance issues. Nassief opens by criticizing Kenny for abandoning rigorous, thoughtful analysis in favor of scattered, unmoored tangents that deliberately avoid answering core questions posed in earlier exchanges, framing Kenny’s approach as a deliberate attempt to chase trivial political gains rather than engage with high-stakes policy and accountability matters.
Central to Nassief’s argument is the debate over the three-month extension to the electoral reform confirmation period, a measure he openly lobbied for and defends as entirely fair and necessary to ensure the long-awaited electoral overhaul unfolds smoothly, transparently, and equitably. He emphasizes that protecting parliamentary democracy, a foundational pillar of Dominican society, is a shared public responsibility, and presses Kenny to clarify his apparent position that the extension request is unreasonable and falls outside DAIC’s mandate to oversee matters impacting private sector and public institutional integrity.
Nassief directly addresses Kenny’s repeated claim that he orchestrated the departure of former DAIC executive director Miss Strachan, noting that he had raised multiple documented concerns about operational decisions that the board allowed Strachan to sideline. He adds that her resignation came as a complete surprise, as he had expected her to once again persuade the board to align with her preferred agenda, and notes that had he anticipated her exit, he may not have chosen to resign his own DAIC post. He further rejects the accusation that he controls DAIC operations in a top-down, exploitative “plantation” model, noting that the current DAIC president volunteered to run for election on her own and was selected entirely on her own merit, with no pressure or request from him to stand for the role.
Turning to the controversial undisclosed Saudi Arabia-linked commercial contract, Nassief clarifies that he has never levelled unsubstantiated accusations of wrongdoing, but only called for a basic, formal inquiry to confirm if a proper public tender process was followed, given the apparent links between the awarded firm and a sitting government minister. He presses Kenny to state explicitly whether he believes DAIC has no right to ask questions about opaque public procurement processes, or if the private sector body should remain silent while no-bid contracts are awarded without proper due diligence.
Nassief then challenges Kenny’s framing of the First Domestic financial saga, noting that while formal regulatory intervention is the statutory purview of government oversight bodies, Kenny’s repeated comparisons to high-profile corporate failures like Enron, CLICO, and BCCI ignore the critical public accountability dimension that would apply if the leaders of those scandal-hit firms held sitting cabinet positions. In such cases, Nassief argues, widespread public and civil society pressure would almost certainly force those officeholders to resign, and he criticizes Kenny, as former DAIC president, for failing to show leadership on the crisis, as well as on the long-running unresolved Hurricane Maria insurance claims that have pushed large swathes of the private sector into financial distress. He dismisses Kenny’s claim that no DAIC members requested him to speak out on these issues as disingenuous, pointing out that as elected president of the private sector body, he held a fiduciary duty to advocate for members’ interests regardless of formal individual requests.
In closing, Nassief pushes back against Kenny’s call for the entire current DAIC board to resign, inviting Kenny to mobilize fellow dissenting members to call an official emergency general meeting to elect new leadership, a move he says he would personally attend. He concludes by criticizing Kenny for adopting a self-righteous, moralizing tone while refusing to defend his positions when systematically challenged, retreating to unsubstantiated aspersions rather than engaging in good-faith public debate.