KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, November 16, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves and Opposition Leader Dr. Godwin Friday are expressing different positions regarding the decision by Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit to hold a snap general election on December 6, two years ahead of the constitutional deadline.
Prime Minister Gonsalves says he believes the ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP) will return to office with no fewer than the 18 seats that it held in the last Parliament, while Friday has supported the decision by the opposition parties to boycott the poll because of electoral reform.
Dominicans will elect a new government two years ahead of the constitutional deadline after Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit led his DLP to a convincing 18-3 victory in the 2019 polls.
Skerrit, in announcing the date for the surprising snap election, said that he wanted to re-set his administration to deal with future socio-economic problems. But the polls are likely to be boycotted by the main opposition parties, including the United Workers Party (UWP), which lost in the 2019 poll and has been calling for electoral reform.
Gonsalves’ Unity Labour Party (ULP), which came to office in March 2001, and the DLP, which has been in office since 2000, are two of the longest-serving parties currently in office in the Commonwealth Caribbean.
Gonsalves said while he did not want to comment on the snap elections in the neighboring Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country, he told radio listeners here, “I read what the Prime Minister of Dominica says and within the context of Dominica, … he’s in the best position to make that judgment”.
Gonsalves, speaking on the state-owned NBC Radio, noted that Skerrit has said that he is seeking a fresh mandate because he wants to have some fresh infusions in this post-COVID period, where things have been very difficult.
“And he outlines all the difficulties, which was a very honest speech,” Gonsalves said, adding, “I read it carefully.
“He didn’t mince his words, and he is going to the electorate saying, ‘Listen, I have some good people; some I have to change because I want to be able over the next five years, as a matter of urgency, to address some of these things more efficaciously,” Gonsalves said, noting that Skerrit had two more years in office before elections were constitutionally due.
“And the last time he went to the polls in 2019, you got 18 of the 21 seats with 59 points something percent of the vote, which is a fantastic performance.
“But he’s in the best place to make the assessment. I’m quite confident that the Dominican people will go along with his judgment. I’m sure that they’ll go along with his judgment because he has had an impressive record of achievement, he has grown in stature as a leader, and in very difficult circumstances, he’s steering the ship. Hasn’t been easy,” Gonsalves said.,
He said he doesn’t anticipate that Skerrit will get numbers less than what he got in 2019, “but he clearly wants to retire early. Some were elected in 2019, and he probably feels that this is the best time to do it in all the circumstances. Well, he feels, not probably.”
Gonsalves said he is impressed with Skerrit as a leader, noting that he came to office “when he was a relatively young man and, first, he had to find his feet and so forth.”
Skerrit, 50, became Prime Minister in 2004 — four years after his election to Parliament — following the sudden death of Prime Minister Pierre Charles in January 2004.
Upon taking office on January 8, 2004, Skerrit, then 31, became the world’s youngest leader, and when he won a fourth consecutive term in office in 2019, he became the first Dominican leader to do so.
“…one of the things with Roosevelt, he has a good progressive framework in which he’s advancing things,” Gonsalves said.
“As you know, I’m not a fan of citizenship by investment, and he knows that but with some of those resources and not even just those resources, the way in which he had managed the place, for a country with a lot of challenges and arising out of when his country was flattened a few years ago by a hurricane, 200 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) gone, gone in the wind.”
Meanwhile, speaking on a radio program here on Monday, Friday noted that Prime Minister Skerrit had called general elections notwithstanding the fact that there are two years left to go in the term and that Sir Dennis Byron, who the government appointed as the sole Commissioner of the electoral reform exercise is yet to complete his work.
“And, November 6, Sir Dennis wrote a letter to the leader of the opposition and the government saying where he was with the report and what the plan of action was going forward,” Friday said.
“He said that he would present phase one of the report in the month of November so the Parliament could then bring in legislation to deal with the register of voters sometime in December, and to be enacted, hopefully, early in the New Year, in January.”
Friday said that Sir Dennis had indicated that after consultation, he would do phase two of his report in February or March of 2023, and then they would have further legislation again in March-April 2023.
“This is the Commissioner, Sir Dennis Byron, outlining the plan for what he is going to do, and then what does the government do? What does the government of Skerrit do? Disregard it entirely and call an election; say, ‘We’re going with the same thing we have here now. All their complaints that people made and so forth and all this stuff that I told you to look into, I don’t care about that. I’m going to call an election now.’”
Friday said the situation is something that people of the region have to take note of, adding “that kind of disregard for process, having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars thus far on this commission — not that the money is the most important thing — the most important thing is the preservation of democracy, to also have the appearance of free and fair elections.
“I mean, a question that people ask, well, if you have this reform, you say that reform is going ahead, that you appointed the Commissioner suggests that you have accepted that the commission is needed, and you will give them the chance to do their work. And then, after that, you can call elections.
“But instead of that, the government has definitely disregarded the work of the commission because it’s not done,” he said, noting that the workflow of the commission, as outlined by Sir Dennis.
“But elections are scheduled for December 6 in Dominica, and the opposition United Workers Party, they basically said the same thing, that you can’t do this and then expect people to participate in the system that we have acknowledged has problems, and just go ahead as if it’s normal.”
Friday noted that the UWP, a sister party of his New Democratic Party, has said that it will boycott the polls.
“… we’re going to have, essentially, a government whose legitimacy is going to be very much questioned. And this is an unfortunate development in our region,” Friday said.
and then 