BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – AS a result of The Observer’s front page article, which stated that the Supervisor of Elections had reportedly disappeared and another was selected to take his place, SKNVibes sought confirmation from the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, the Hon. Vincent Byron Jr.
In an exclusive interview yesterday (Apr. 22), the AG stated that George, whose substantive employ is that of a Probation Officer, is currently overseas after the ministry within which he works had officially granted him leave on medical terms.
“My understanding that the Acting Supervisor of Elections, Mr. George, has had medical leave from his substantive post at another ministry and that he is off island. At the moment, the substantive holder of the post of Supervisor of Elections, Mr. Rafael Archibald, who had medical problems and challenges, resigned shortly before the General Elections, and so there is no permanent Supervisor at the moment.
“I would tell you that there has been no appointment of a new Supervisor of Elections and discussions are undergoing as to what we are about.”
The AG informed that the position is a constitutional one and explained the procedure in which the Supervisor of Elections is appointed.
“To have a new Supervisor of Elections, the Governor-General will have to make such an appointment once he had consulted with the Prime Minister, the Premier of Nevi and the Leader of the Opposition. However, to date, none of those consultations have been had. Therefore, at the moment, Mr. George is still acting but he had requested medical leave.”
Earlier in the interview, Byron declared that the Unity Government had launched an investigation into the activities of the process of the February 16 General Elections and noted that it is ongoing.
“It involves a number of disciplines and the first one clearly that we need to get to the bottom of is the publication of lists, voters’ registers, during the elections period. After the bell was run, I would say, there should have been the publication of final lists. The Court of Appeal made an order that two lists be published and they should be at a certain date, but there was a breach of that order and some confusion over as to what list would have been used for the final count.
“We knew that the new list, based on the boundaries change, was up to date but the old list was not. That list was up to 2014, about 12 months short! Objections had to be made about what went wrong and during the course of that another list was produced, and there obviously seemed to be some inconsistencies there. So part of the investigation had to deal with that.”
He said the second discipline is the fiasco in relation to George’s announcement of the results on the night following the Elections.
On the evening when the ballots were being counted, the first set of results was not made public until approximately 11:00 p.m. However, following that, there was a steady flow with the first two seats to be declared being Constituencies 10 and Two.
Constituency 10 was won by Nevis’ Premier the Hon. Vance Amory of the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) and Constituency Two by the Hon. Marcella Liburd of the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP).
The announcement of results ceased sometime after 3:00 a.m. and the three panellists on ZIZ television told viewers that they had received information indicating that no further results would be declared for the day.
However, by 4:30 a.m. unofficial reports were circulating that the tri-party Team Unity had won seven of the 11 seats and its supporters had taken to the streets in celebratory mood.
It was reported that those who were assigned to count the ballots for various Constituencies had stated who the winners were and that information was forwarded to the Supervisor of Elections, and questions were being asked as to why he did not announce the results.
Subsequently, in a brief interview with ZIZ, George indicated that he did not announce the other results because they were being contested, and had he announced them it would have been unfair to the contesting parties.
He had however promised that the results would have been announced by midday on February 18, but that was not so until 5:00 p.m.
The Minister of Justice stressed that the third aspect of investigation surrounds a break-in of the Electoral Office.
“Subsequent to the fiasco in relation to Mr. George’s announcement of the results, there was a break-in at the Electoral Office and ballot boxes were found there that had been breached. There had to be an investigation into that as well. I should also point out that we discovered that the computers in the Electoral Office had been compromised and damaged.
“Those were the ongoing investigations in relation to the general conduct of the election period. But our investigation, at the same time, has a wider ambit. We in Team Unity, this Government of national unity, has made it a priority that there should be electoral reform, and so a lot of our investigation into looking at practices and procedures at the Electoral Office are being prepared for us to layout a foundation for further consultation with the public to set up a proper process to begin the electoral reform.”
AG Byron also informed that in addition to experts who are working assiduously to have the computers fixed, the police have been questioning a number of individuals concerning the break-in.
