BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – MEMBERS on the Opposition Benches were yesterday afternoon (Jan. 16) granted an injunction restraining the Labour Party Government from proclaiming the Constituency Boundaries Commission’s Report that was laid before and approved by the House of Assembly.
However, according to a release, the Governor-General, His Excellency Sir Edmund Lawrence, had signed the proclamation which was also gazetted yesterday.
In an interview with WINN FM’s Andre Huie, Senior Counsel Chris Hamel-Smith, who is representing the Opposition Members, explained what transpired in the Basseterre High Court yesterday afternoon.
“In an emergency sitting of the High Court, the judge granted an injunction restraining the Government from issuing a proclamation with respect to the resolution approving the Boundaries Report that had been approved by the Boundaries Commission late this afternoon.”
The Senior Counsel declared that the decision was made while the Parliamentary emergency sitting was in progress.
“This was done whilst the emergency sitting of Parliament was going on. That is why the judge gave the injunction in the form of stopping the proclamation of the resolution, because by that stage it made no sense trying to stop the actual sitting of the Parliament because, of course, that was in progress. However, she had stopped the resolution from being proclaimed, which is what is required for it to have effect.”
Hamel-Smith, on request, explained in layman’s term what the injunction meant.
“In layman’s terms it means that the judge has said that things must not change until the Court has an opportunity to look at the whole matter properly and not under the unfair and undue pressure and haste that was created this afternoon. So the judge has fixed a hearing for next week when the matter can be looked at completely and dispassionately with a view to doing justice on the merit. But the judge stopped what happened this afternoon in terms of the attempt to rush through a fundamental change to the rules of St. Kitts in a really quite extraordinary and indecent way.
“And so the judge simply stopped that process so that the Court could have the opportunity to properly adjudicate on the matter and provide what at the end of the day would be the result that the Court thinks is fair, legal and according to the Constitution.”
He also provided answers to the questions of the Prime Minister’s dissolution of Parliament and the action to be taken by the Court in the face of General Elections.
“The Prime Minister can dissolve Parliament whenever he chooses, and that is a decision he has made. The question now becomes for the Court: whether the Elections that will take place will take place under the existing boundaries, because the Court finds that the Report of the Boundaries Commission was produced by a process that was illegal and unconstitutional, or whether it will find that the process was a fair one, in which case, presumably, it would allow the Report to go forward. But the Court will now have the opportunity to decide that on the merit after proper consideration, rather than to have a situation which the Government simply by breaking all of the rules.”
Hamel-Smith claimed that not all Parliamentarians were given adequate notice of the emergency sitting of the Parliament, which he declared was improper.
“I mean Parliamentarians were given notice of today’s sitting, some of them, after the time that the sitting was to begin. So how could you possibly have a proper sitting of the National Assembly when the people who are elected to represent the people of St. Kitts and Nevis are not told in advance that that sitting was going to take place? So the Court had stopped that and has said that next week, having stopped that, would stop that, the Court would be able to look into the whole question and decide how we proceed.”
Meanwhile, Senator Vincent Byron Jr., who is a member of the Constituency Boundaries Commission, told WINN FM that what transpired yesterday was most indecent and he felt “very bad to be a Kittitian-Nevisian to see our Government can trample on our constitutional provision and the rule of law”.
He opined that it was a mockery of any sort of democracy system that happened yesterday.
Byron told that media house that he was not given adequate notice of the emergency Parliamentary sitting.
“I happen to come out of the Boundaries Commission meeting at 3:45 p.m., and as I was handed a letter giving me notice at 4:05 p.m. It’s is ridiculous, utterly ridiculous! And anybody who supports this Government ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
He said that no one should expect a government of all people to behave in the way the Labour Party Government did and that ‘no one should, in any way, give any credence to what they did”.
Following the passing of the resolution, Prime Minister Douglas announced to a fair-size crowd of Labour and Opposition supporters that the draft proclamation with accompanying resolution was submitted to the Governor-General and a proclamation in the terms of the recommended draft was gazetted.
“I hereby now announce that I have advised His Excellency the Governor-General to dissolve the Parliament, the National Assembly, effective today 16th January 2015 to give effect to the proclamation, which has realigned the constituency boundaries of St. Christopher and Nevis. The date of the General Election in St. Christopher and Nevis shall therefore be announced at a later date.”
And a press release from the Communications Unit of the Office of the Prime Minister (CUOPM), which contained copies of two Statutory Rules and Orders (SROs) signed by the Clerk of the National Assembly, Jose Lloyd, addressed the National House of Assembly’s approval of the draft proclamation by resolution pursuant to and in accordance with section 50 of the Constitution of St. Christopher and Nevis.
It also stated that both SROs were published on January 16, 2015 in the “Extra Ordinary Gazette No. 3 of 2015”.
