Hon Marcella Liburd
Attorney General, Sen. the Hon. Vincent Byron Jr. should never have been appointed as minister responsible for the Electoral Office.
This is the view expressed by St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) chairperson, Hon. Marcella Liburd.
“The attorney general is the chief legal advisor to the government and has the responsibility to ensure that injustice is not done to the citizens of this country. When an attorney general is also the minister with responsibility for elections to whom and where do one go to when there are irregularities and breaches taking place in the office,” asked Liburd, the Parliamentary Representative for St. Christopher 2 (Central Basseterre).
“The attorney general is in a position of conflict; what is he going to do? Is he going to advise himself? Can he advise the government?” she further asked.
Calling on all the citizens to be vigilant to take note of what is happening at the electoral office, the SKNLP chairperson pointed out that the St. Kitts and Nevis Electoral Commission is not properly constituted.
“It should consist of three persons. Presently there are just two – the chairman appointed by the Governor General in his own deliberate judgement; and the other person is in this case, lawyer Jason Hamilton, who was appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Leader of the Opposition,” she said.
Ms. Liburd complained there have not been meetings of the Electoral Commission which has a duty to supervise the Supervisor of Elections in the performance of his duties.
“The commission does not meet. Our representative Mr. Hamilton has been complaining for months that there has been no meetings of the Electoral Commission and has written several letters on this matter and all he has received in response is abuse from the chairman, Mr. Nassibou Butler. Mr. Butler claims he is having meetings, but Mr. Hamilton is not aware of those meetings. It is either Mr. Butler is having meetings with himself or with other persons who are not members of the commission,” said Liburd, a former minister, deputy speaker and speaker.
“Is he meeting with the Attorney General? Is he meeting with the Supervisor of Elections, Mr. Elvin Bailey?” she further asked.
Butler, a lawyer, is a former candidate for the Team Unity coalition party, the People’s Action Movement (PAM).
The St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) has called on the Supervisor of Elections to publish forthwith all the Revised Monthly Lists of Voters that have become due for publication after February of 2015 and up to the current date.
Bailey has also been accused of illegally removing the names of Nigerian students, other Commonwealth citizens and nationals from the St. Kitts and Nevis Voters List in defiance of a high court ruling.
The opposition Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) has also threatened to take legal action against the Supervisor of Elections and the Electoral Commission over what it said was apparent clandestine attempts to disenfranchise voters.
Registration officers on Nevis and St. Kitts have also been accused of allowing persons to register illegally and removing the names of other persons from the list without notice.