KINGSTOWN, St Vincent, November 17, Opposition Leader Godwin Friday has expressed concerns about snap general elections in Dominica even as a commission’s recommendations on electoral reform are yet to be implemented.
Earlier this month, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit announced that residents would go to the polls on December 6, three years after he led the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) to an 18-3 victory in the general election of 2019 and two years before the next elections are constitutionally due.
Since then, the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) and the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP), have announced they will boycott the polls.
The UWP said it remained convinced that the electoral reform “as demanded by the Dominican population is needed to facilitate free and fair elections” in Dominica, while DFP leader Bernard Hurtault said the party “cannot in clear conscience continue to validate a deeply flawed and anti-democratic election process.”
Speaking on local radio, Friday noted that Skerrit had called elections notwithstanding the fact that Sir Dennis Byron, who the government appointed as commissioner of the electoral reform exercise, is yet to complete his work.
“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 pointed out.
“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 added 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 the 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 people of the region had taken note of “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,” the St. Vincent Opposition Leader said.
“….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 a chance to do their work, and then after that, you can call elections….. The government has definitely disregarded the work of the commission because it’s not done.”
Friday, whose New Democratic Party (NDP) is a sister party of the UWP, suggested that coming out of the December 6 vote, “we’re going to have, essentially, a government whose legitimacy is going to be very much questioned.”
“This is an unfortunate development in our region, and we all have to pay attention to it. Very few people in the region can afford to turn away; nobody can afford to turn away from this sort of thing and not pay attention to it and suggest ‘well, oh, this is just for Dominicans,’” the NDP leader said.
“We had our challenges here and still have our challenges here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. We have to take an interest in what is happening there … because we’re all one economic space, we’re one region, and we should be adopting best practices.
“And first and foremost, we should ensure that democracy, that our democratic system, our democratic traditions are upheld and that we are always going to be able to say that a government when it is elected, it was elected, free and fair. When we can’t do that, we put our entire societies in jeopardy because people try, they either get alienated from the system or they find other means to try to express their dissatisfaction with the government if they feel that the ballot isn’t working, and nobody wants any of that to happen,” he said.
Friday added: “We want to have our transition of government to have the legitimacy of having had free and fair elections, and that both parties or whoever the participants in the system acknowledge the results. That is going to be very much questioned in the circumstances that are there now in Dominica. And we all must express our deep concern about that.”
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