BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – The 2004 petition brought against former Member of Parliament Cedric Liburd by current Member of Parliament Eugene Hamilton has finally been disposed of with costs being awarded to the respondent.
General Elections were held in St. Kitts-Nevis in 2004 during which Hamilton, representing the People’s Action Movement challenged Liburd, representing the St. Kitts Nevis Labour Party in Constituency Number Eight.
Hamilton was defeated by Liburd and as a result, Hamilton filed a petition before the court challenging the results of that constituency.
According to Hamilton’s explanation of the issue, “In the 2004 petition that I brought against Cedric Liburd…Justice Baptiste has allowed an application to strike out a number of parts of the petition and left it with bare bones so that when it went to trial in 2004, my senior counsel had eventually decided it was not enough to overturn the elections. So he yielded to the court and told the court he would not pursue the matter any further.”
He also explained that the court wrote to dismiss the case and awarded costs in Liburd’s favour.
The other respondents in that matter, who were not awarded costs, appealed that decision and the Court of Appeal, as explained by Hamilton, ruled that they should be awarded costs “so that what was left then was for us to go to what we call quantifying the costs”.
While he indicated that the total cost he would have to pay is in the region of $550,000, a “breaking news” notice issued by Disseminateit.com on December 2, 2011, proclaimed that, “Judge Orders Eugene Hamilton to Pay More Than $1.5 Million in Petition Matter”.
However Liburd, former Minister of Agriculture, told SKNVibes that from his understanding of the situation, the court ordered that Hamilton pay his counsels’ (Anthony Astaphan and Glenford Hamilton) costs.
By his calculations, his counsels are to receive near US$83 400 in total.
He also explained that representation was provided for him as well as MP Earl Asim Martin, former MP Rupert Herbert against whom similar petitions were filed.
Liburd noted that costs for all the cases were awarded by the court, thus, just one third of the US$545 000 stated in the judgment is to be paid by Hamilton.
Therefore, as Liburd explained, rather than having to foot the EC$1.5 M bill as suggested by Disseminateit.com, Hamilton would have to pay costs to the tune of approximately EC$716 000.
However, just this week in a 2008 Election Petition case brought by Liburd seeking to overturn Hamilton’s victory at the polls, Liburd was the loser this time around and ordered to pay costs. These costs have not yet been quantified.
