By PAM’s Secretariat

It is well known to the public at large by now, both here in the Federation and in the wider region, that the Labour government led by Prime Minister Douglas has had a severe losing streak in the High Court as the Constitutional cases make their way through the judicial process. In his desperation to find an explanation for this obvious repudiation of his much trumpeted Electoral Reform process, the Prime Minister himself and through his well known spokesmen has tried to claim that the challenge brought by the People’s Action Movement to his attempt to gerrymander the boundaries is a case of sour grapes. After all, he claims the PAM boycotted his process and does not like the result so it is playing politics. As with virtually every utterance from the Prime Minister, this sentiment falls squarely under the learned opinion of Judge Belle; it is estranged from the truth.

The fact is that Electoral Reform has never been a policy of this Labour government. Beginning with the amendment to the electoral laws that accompanied the preparation for Independence, the People’s Action Movement inaugurated a modern and Constitutional framework for elections that included the recognition of free and fair elections as a fundament right of the citizens of the Federation and created a system that removed control of the process from the direct prerogative of the Prime Minister. This is why there now exist both an Electoral Commission and a separate Boundaries Commission. 

In addition the Independence Administration that took steps to protect the integrity of communities in the consideration of boundaries to correct the injustice done by the Bradshaw regime in the 60s when Sandy Point was wrenched in two to dilute its vote, it empowered the youth of the nation by giving 18-year-olds a voice in government and gave the nation nine months to become educated about the revolutionary change that was made and to be acclimatized to new boundaries between the coming into effect of the Constitution on 19th  of September 1983 and the first General Elections in the new nation on the 21st June 1984. 

The reason that the Federation is at this point now when the entire Commonwealth Caribbean is observing our political system with concern and anxiety, is the direct result of political pressure brought to bear on the Douglas regime that by 2006 it could no long resist. The concerted groundswell of public interest and eventually demand for reform in the electoral process began again with the People’s Action Movement in 1999. In an article published on the 23rd of January 1999 issue of The Democrat and entitled Electoral Reform Now, the call was made to implement the recommendation of the Observer Mission from 1995 to introduce voter ID. Throughout that year several examples of voter fraud were publicized including the registration of several persons in constituencies 1 and 2 at addresses that were business places. Also, Dr. Simmonds raised the issue with Prime Minister Douglas at a meeting to discuss constitutional reform on the 28th of April of that same year, 1999.

The Labour government rejected every suggestion of Electoral Reform including refusing to admit international observers for the General Elections of 2000. Faced with an obstinate administration, the People’s Action Movement engaged all facets of the political process on this issue beginning with a public awareness campaign which included town hall meetings at home and abroad to sensitize nationals on the issue long before the labour government bowed to pressure in 2006. The People’s Action Movement was in the forefront of the call for the return of Commonwealth Observers in 2004 to which the labour government only grudgingly conceded, because even then its credibility was already weakened.

The process instituted in 2006 had all the hallmarks of Shakespearean tragedy. It began with a fatal contradiction; the idea that one party could be considered in good faith as the only judge as well as a participant in a fair process. The labour government at all times exercised effective control of the process and appointed all the committees. The Prime Minister even attended the town hall meeting in Sandy Point to declare that his government would never agree to fingerprint voter ID, despite the fact that the consultations showed that a clear majority of 60% favoured the introduction of voter ID with fingerprint. This clearly showed that the consultations were a farce as the government had already decided the outcome. Finally, the leader of the Parliamentary Committee had already informed the country that the boundaries would change; they would get electoral reform and not like it.

 It had its central players; the leaders of the two political parties on St. Kitts, but mainly democracy itself and the constitution were in the balance. The process contained both the disappointed hope of the People’s Action Movement of being able to participate in an open, impartial, lawful and credible process and, at the consummation, the frustrated ambition of a Prime Minister who held delusions of grandeur that depended on effecting fait accompli on July 3rd of this year. He actually expected to lay his tainted report, pass his tainted proclamation, prorogue the Parliament, and after a grand entrance to Warner Park in a red convertible, ring the bell and call the elections all in the same day! The final ingredient of the tragedy is the death of the main protagonist and, in this case, the death of democracy would have been the certain result if the Hon. Shawn Richards were not there to frustrate the ambition of Prime Minister Douglas.

The leadership of the PAM took the principled position to refuse to be an accomplice in this national tragedy. It refused the demand by this labour government to lend the appearance of credibility to this attack on the right to free and fair elections as recognized in the Constitution. However, the PAM never ceded the ground of electoral reform to this Labour government. At every step of the way the PAM engaged with the public, stakeholders and even this government.

The PAM wrote several letters to this government that are now part of the court record requesting clarifications and explanation. There is an extensive record of correspondence with CARICOM, the OAS, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OECS showing the commitment of the PAM to electoral reform if it had a credible partner in government. PAM brought Danville Walker, former director of elections in Jamaica to give a public lecture on the issue of voter ID with fingerprint in October of 2007. PAM met with the CIC, the Christian Council and several other groups to discuss the best way forward and to educate these groups on the PAM’s plan for electoral reform. PAM organized a massive public demonstration in September 2007 that wound through the streets of Basseterre on the issue of Electoral Reform including voter ID with fingerprint. PAM made a formal submission to the consultative committee at the same town hall meeting at which the Prime Minister aborted any possibility of a fair process. In other words, the PAM has always been actively engaged with the issue of electoral reform.

It was when the PAM had exhausted all the legitimate political avenues that it moved to the courts. Again, history will show that the PAM chose to appeal to the authority of law over that of violence. No one could be less surprised when the learned Judge Rita Joseph-Olivetti declared in paragraph 48 of her judgment in the contempt matter that “the fact that the report was laid in the National Assembly in the face of the substantive matter still pending before the court never mind the injunction shows a degree of unprecedented haste for a matter of such significance to the country as a whole- the changing of constituency boundaries - and sheds doubt on the entire process and tends to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Access to the court is a constitutional right and cannot be lightly treated.” From the very beginning it was clear to the PAM that this process was doubtful which is why it refused to participate.

Desperate to salvage something from all his effort, the Prime Minister stooped to attempting to impugn the integrity of eminent legal professionals from the region with charges of political interference. But when he was required to appear in court as a witness for the Hon. Shawn Richards against his own Attorney General and humbled before the judicial bench, he could not even take responsibility for his own illegal actions. He hid behind the coattails of the Prime Minister of Barbados, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the former Prime Minister and current Leader of the Opposition in St. Lucia. The Prime Minister has even invited this same opposition politician to attend court on behalf of his government.

The problems with the Report of the Boundaries Commission that the PAM has asked the court to review included the questionable appointment of the technical committee that did the work that formed its basis, the failure to abide by the time limits and the failure to follow the constitutional requirements for adjusting boundaries. The Prime Minister proved this last point in his press conference on July10th when he said that he ignored the Commission’s recommendations with regards to Nevis because the Constitution says that intact communities must not be divided, but yet he agreed to the recommendation to carve out one polling division from the intact community of Cayon. So the Constitution applies in Nevis but not in St. Kitts; how convenient for the Prime Minister!

There are three other problems with the doubtful and tainted process instituted by the government. (1) It completely ignored the recommendations of the Commonwealth Observer Mission Report of 2005. This labour government has refused to conduct an enumeration exercise to facilitate the creation of a new voters list, and the voters list is at the heart of the fraud that a reform process should have corrected. To quote page 11 of this report: “We were able to establish that the names of eligible voters were excluded from the electoral roll and we did see evidence of this; that there were examples of more than one person voting under the same name since there is an absence of voter ID; that there were several examples of persons voting in constituencies for which prima facie they would not by law qualify to be registered to vote.” The law in this case was explained by the learned Judge Francis Belle in his decision in the petition case brought by Mr. Lindsay Grant and, simply put, declared that a person must register where he or she lives. Only an enumeration process could determine actual residence and this labour government has refused to do such a process. This failure casts doubt on the credibility of the voters list.

(2) The second problem with this process is that this labour government changed the rules throughout the game. In Judge Belle’s ruling in 2006, he declared that “in my view the language and context of the section 42 leads to the conclusion that a qualified voter should only be registered to vote in a constituency where he/she resides, is ordinarily resident or is domiciled. Any other interpretation would lead to an absurdity, making it possible that a person would be able to go anywhere and register”.  The electoral law was amended in 2007 to include just that absurdity; a person can now have several legal residences and choose any one for registration purposes. 

The amendments also included a confirmation process by which this labour government could legalize the fraud that was observed by the Observer Mission in 2004 and criticized by Judge Belle in 2006. In fact, Judge Belle noted that “there is no doubt that there were glaring irregularities in the electoral process in constituency No. 4 and in particular Polling Division 4 where we heard that 3 persons’ names were presented to the Presiding Officer by Dr. Denzil Douglas along with a letter from the Supervisor of Elections saying they were entitled to vote.  This was done in violation of the Election Laws of the Federation in particular Regulation 26 of 1984”. 

People who were fraudulently registered, to begin with, were simply allowed to confirm this illegal registration. (3) The third problem was to tamper with the process for objections.

This same objections process led to a case by Mr. Eugene Hamilton upon which Judge Belle ruled this June. In paragraph 20 of his judgment the learned judge ruled that “the Registration Officer should have been able to demonstrate to the Court that he made an independent check of the alleged residencies of the voters in both constituencies”. This labour government was hoist by its own petard. The learned judge also felt it important to note in this same paragraph that the failure of the registration officer to investigate the claims of residence “smacked of bias since the Registration Officer would be seen to be a judge in his own case defending his own voters list as it were rather that protecting the integrity of the voters list by leaving no stone unturned to ensure that it could stand up to close scrutiny in any election and the result of any election would be left beyond reproach”. 

Even after this labour government electoral reform process, or perhaps because of it, the fraudulent registration and corruption through bias continues. In this case however, two names of residents of St. Pauls in Constituency #6 Nioka Morris and Carol Freeman were removed from the Constituency #8 list by the judge. According to Judge Belle at paragraph 22 “I can see no reason for overly protecting the voting rights of persons who conduct themselves in this way”. A funny twist is that the labour party is claiming that it also has objections that have not been heard in constituency #4. So, their process in not even working for them but they were rushing into an election with this corrupt process.

The final moving of the goalposts concerns the issue of dual citizenship. After this issue was raised in the public in 2007, Mr. Lindsay Grant promised the voters that both he and the Hon. Shawn Richards would renounce their American citizenship before the next election, and they both have done so and displayed their certificates to the media. However, Prime Minister Douglas does not think that he can take the chance with the two constituencies that these two men will contest, so he has changed the rules. According to the Lindsay Grant and Shawn Richards Act, candidates will have to prove to the satisfaction of the Registration Officer on Nomination Day that they have renounced any other citizenship since the last election. There are three fundamental flaws with this new law. (1) The learned Judge Belle has already expressed concern about the bias of Registration Officers. (2) This law requires candidates to bring evidence to disprove the implicit accusation that they are dual citizens. This reverses the onus of the burden of proof which follows the rule “he who accuses must prove” that has been established since 1886. It is a fundamental violation of due process and a clear example of an action that cannot be shown “to be reasonably justifiable in a democratic society” as repeatedly required by the Constitution.

Finally this law clearly goes against the Constitution which in s 36 (1) (a) states that “the High Court shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine any question whether any person has been validly elected as a Representative”. It also states that such a question shall be determined as an election petition which must be brought within 21 days of an election. There is no provision for anyone else such as a Registration Officer on nomination day to prematurely decide whether an election is valid. It is for these reasons that this law will be challenged.

There is no chance of confusing the current labour government electoral process with one that is fair, impartial and credible, and astute citizens know that any election under such a system would be a sham and such a sham must be prevented. It is a simple fact that the only form of protection that any minority party like the PAM in this case has against the tyranny of the majority is the court. It is this protection that this labour government has tried on July 8th and 9th to strip away, but not just from a minority political party but from each citizen. It is clear that the principled stand taken by the PAM has been vindicated by the Court and even clearer from the actions of the Prime Minister that he fears that the electorate will render the same verdict once the election is called.