Voters rush to beat Registration Confirmation deadline
By L.K. Hewlett
Editor- SKNVibes.com
Basseterre, St. Kitts – WITH just about 24 hours remaining before the confirmation of voter registration deadline, droves of nationals and resident citizens queued up outside the Electoral Office on Central Street today (Sept. 29) to ensure their eligibility to vote in the next general elections.
The lines grew so long outside the St. Kitts Electoral Office that confirmation of registration was set up in the adjacent Treasury Building.
It was also reported that a similar scenario was observed at the Nevis Electoral Office today as citizens and residents there tried to guarantee that their names were on the current Voters’ List.
Persons also turned up to the respective offices to collect their National Identification Cards along with first time registrants.
Voters living overseas were allowed to confirm their registration at Consulates and Embassies in their respective countries as the Federation’s leader Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas was adamant that no one should be “disenfranchised”. Accommodations were also made to ‘decentralize the confirmation process’ giving persons in rural communities and those whose mobility was impaired due to poor health or age the opportunity to confirm their registration.
With general elections constitutionally due in 2009, many political pundits have predicted that Prime Minister Douglas will soon
ring the bell and announce the date of the Elections.
In anticipation of the event, campaigns began in earnest a few months ago and the two leading political parties, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party and the People’s Action Movement (PAM) have each hosted several political meetings across the island.
PAM’s latest campaign against the incumbent Labour Party Administration saw temporary derailment last week when crews from the Public Works Department were ‘tasked’ to remove a number of the Party’s large billboards calling for change.
PAM has also taken its jabs at the Labour Administration by publishing scathing headlines in the party-owned Democrat newspaper referencing the escalating crime statistics and highlighting the exorbitant National Debt.
Since the start of the voter registration process in December of 2007, all political parties and independent candidates have been vocal about their opinion of the process and its transparency. ~~Adz:Left~~
According to Lindsay Grant, leader of PAM, “The confirmation process as is being currently conducted is froth with corruption and government manipulation. However despite this it is extremely important that everyone ensures their franchise by re-confirming their registration.”
The latest accusations of corruption within the process came from Leader of the Opposition, Mark Brantley of the Concerned Citizen Movement (CCM) on Nevis, who alleges that the process has been “compromised” and called for the Supervisor of Elections, Leroy Benjamin and his assistant on Nevis, Beulah Mills, to tender their resignations. He informed that both individuals are “unfit to hold an office of such sacred trust”.
SKNVibes spoke with Supervisor of Elections Leroy Benjamin Sr., who confirmed that mobile registration areas had been set up for confirmation of voter registration and not for new registrants. He also urged voters to meet tomorrow’s deadline as those persons who miss the September 30 cutoff would be required to begin the process anew as if they had never registered to vote.
When asked about the number of persons who had confirmed their registration to date, Benjamin said that information “would be released shortly after the end of the process”.
