BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM) maintains that not only was it robbed of a victory at the polls on July 11, but that democracy in St. Kitts and Nevis is under threat. Resultantly, it is making plans to file an election petition before the court by the end of this week.
“The Concerned Citizens Movement is displeased with the whole conduct of the elections and of course does not accept the results of the election. We are prepared to file an election petition shortly. We have 21 days in which to do so and we are presently preparing the material to present to the court when we file the petition,” Theodore Hobson, one of the legal representatives for the CCM, told SKNVibes.
Both parties fielded candidates to contest all five constituencies, and with each party winning two seats prior to the announcement of the result from the final ballot box in Constituency Number Two, it was rumoured that that seat was won by the CCM.
The final announcement however revealed that Mark Brantley of the CCM was edged out by Hensley Brantley of the NRP by 14 votes.
According to the CCM, hundreds of voters were disenfranchised prior to the elections because more than 200 names were removed from the Voters’ List. The party also indicated that most of the names were from Brantley’s and Daniel’s Constituency.
Hobson told this publication that as the CCM prepares to go to court, “We are hoping to bring in experienced lawyers from abroad. We are also putting together a very strong legal team; lawyers from St. Kitts and Nevis should be meeting early (this) week to draft the petition and to get the material together. So we are hoping towards the end of (this week), we will file the petition.”
The grounds of the petition, according to Hobson, surround, among other things, the counting of the ballots and the disfranchising of voters.
“You would remember that the Electoral Commission instructed the Supervisor of Elections to reinstate those 243 persons who had been illegally removed from the Voters’ List and we went to court on that. Five of those were reinstated. The other 238 or so were not, mainly because we only had two days in which to file the action. The judge was clear in his judgment that these people were taken off unlawfully, so that is the basis on which we are going to be moving…
“In the Constituency of St. John, which is Mr. Brantley’s Constituency, you have something like 171 persons whose names were taken off the list and a significant portion of those actually went to the polls but were turned back. So, grounds like that we are going to bring. I don’t think any court in the world would find this unfair…”
Speaking to the CCM’s confidence level regarding the success of the petition, Hobson expressed, “We are feeling confident that at least there would be a by-election. We are hoping that we don’t have a by-election but that Mr. Brantley would be installed as the representative for that constituency. We know there will be a decision in our favour…”
For the sake of the country, as Hobson explained, he hopes the court “would meet expeditiously when we file the petition. I have no control over that, but I hope and trust that in the interest of the country the matter will be done expeditiously and that justice will not only be done but will seem to be done.”
Until such time however, Hobson says the hope is that the present administration, which was sworn in hours after the win, “would resign and save the country all that paid because they knew very well that they didn’t win any election. But we are not holding our breath regarding that because we know the beast we are dealing with.”
