BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THE Nevis election petition appeal case concluded on Friday (July 6) but the outcome will not be known for some time, as the presiding Justices of Appeal have reserved their decision.
Justices Davidson Baptiste, Janice Pereira and Ian Donaldson Mitchell sat through two days of arguments presented at the Nevis Circuit Court by Anthony Astaphan QC, counsel for Supervisor of Elections Pastor Leroy Benjamin and others; Dr. Henry Browne, counsel for Joseph Parry and Hensley Daniel; and Douglas Mendes SC, counsel for Mark Brantley.
The final day of the case saw a lengthy presentation by Mendes who admonished the Justices of Appeal to uphold the lower court’s decision that results of the Nevis elections of July 2011 for Constituency Number Two are invalid.
He also suggested to the court that because the removal of the 203 names from the Voters’ List was done illegally, the Court of Appeal should rule that they were either never removed or order that they be restored to the list.
Mendes noted that the results of an election should be invalidated if it is found that a fundamental principle, on which the National Assembly Elections Act is based, was not carried out.
He elucidated that following the removal of the 203 names of persons registered to vote in Constituency Number Two (St. Johns) from the Voters’ List, the Registration Officer was mandated by law to publish that the names were removed, an action which he said she did not carry out.
The effect therefore – Mendes argued – was that those whose names were removed from the list were not even afforded an opportunity of recourse because they would not have been aware that their names were removed therefrom.
Mendes told the court that the behaviour of the Supervisor of Elections and the Registration Officer and the violations of the principles of the act are “egregious” and “deliberate”.
In asking the court to order that the 203 names be returned to the Voters’ List, Mendes pleaded that a system of representative democracy could not survive if this type of behaviour is allowed to go unchecked.
As the officers of the court and members of the public filed out of the court following the conclusion of the case, persons were seen congregating in proximity; some questioning about the outcome.
Dr. Browne, in an interview with SKNVibes, said he is confident that his team put forward a good case.
“Everybody has put their case. We need now to wait decently and in order until the results or the decisions are returned by the learned Justices. No amount of noise and hoopla and jangle and riot can determine what the result would be. We have to wait on the judges of the court. So all this orchestrated party and noise means nothing until the results are known through the decision of the court. I am always confident until the court says otherwise”
Brantley also expressed confidence in his case, noting that the law and the facts are on his side.
“We don’t know what the outcome would be but we feel very confident. We presented a good case, that the law is on our side, the facts are on our side and history is on our side…”
He expressed that as the servants of the people, the CCM felt it necessary to mount such a case in protection of a right which was won for the people in the 1950s.
“We would like the public to remember that we the CCM in this difficult hour of our history, we stood up for democracy and we stood up for what is right and we stood up for the rights of our people to vote; a right that was won back in the 1950s. And it appears that some in power would wish to deprive our people of it in order to hold on to power.”
Although he does not know what the outcome would be, Brantley is confident that the judges’ decision would be one which “supports democracy, good governance and the rights of our people, not only in St. Kitts and Nevis but in the wider Caribbean”.
The Justices of Appeal indicated that once the judgment was ready, the parties involved in the matter would be informed.
