NDP wants to go fishing

Editor: As I understand it, votes were cast at 15 Central Leeward polling stations in the presence of both NDP and ULP agents and INDEPENDENT regional and international observers. These same ballots were then counted in the presence of NDP agents and the regional and international independent observers. The following day, NDP and ULP agents, along with NDP LAWYERS together again counted these ballots in the presence of the independent regional and international observers and agreed on the final totals.{{more}}

It is now difficult to understand how, after all its vigilance, rigorous and through checking, that the NDP has now resorted to protests and claims of “stunning” and “overwhelming “evidence of election fraud in the Central Leeward constituency. What is interesting is that after 10 days, the NDP has not filed any election petition. Instead, the NDP has only at this point asked the Court to allow them to SECURE all the electoral documents and information for Central Leeward so that they can AGAIN be allowed to go through that material to see if they can find any evidence of the fraud that it had earlier claimed was so “overwhelming” in its presence.

The most damning and interesting claim by the Leader of the Opposition was the “stunning” evidence that 320 illegal votes were cast in Central Leeward. It would be interesting to hear WHEN and HOW these “illegal” votes were identified, since in order to make such an assertion, evidence of some illegal activity must have been observed by someone. It surely cannot be just a feeling that we are going on. A likely scenario seems to be that, having made an initial claim of victory by six votes, (a claim we are told that was messaged in by an NDP poll clerk from one of the Barrouallie polling stations) the NDP used simple arithmetic to arrive at its claim that 320 “illegal” votes were cast at some point in the process. But assuming this is not the case, let us examine the possibilities.

To properly evaluate this claim by the NDP, we must begin with the general assumption that ALL 320 “illegal” ballots were in favour of the ULP. Secondly, if they were cast during the stipulated voting hours, then they would have been included in the count that gave the NDP’s Exeter a win by six votes. In this scenario the NDP’s claim should therefore have been that they won by 326 votes and that the injection of 320 “illegal” ULP ballots reduced their margin to just six. But that has not been the NDP’s story, so we must rule out that scenario and move on to the next.

The fact that a RECOUNT conducted on the following day by both the NDP and the ULP revealed totals that differed from the final election night totals by just one vote tells us that the “illegal” votes were not introduced overnight, after the final count. If, as agreed earlier, these “illegal” ULP ballots were not included up to the time of the NDP’s claim of a win by six votes, then the ONLY window we are left with is the 45 minute period between the NDP’s claim of victory by six votes and the ULP’s claim of victory by 314 votes. What this means is that sometime during that 45 minute period, 320 “illegal” ULP ballots were injected into the ongoing count and that this happened either at one polling station or that they were systematically distributed among the 15 polling stations.

If we believe that this scenario is at all probable, given the presence of observers and party agents, then we are likely to query the results in all of the other constituencies, including those won by the NDP. Clearly, for such massive fraud to have taken place over the period of 45 minutes, the evidence would be jumping out at us and the NDP’s fishing expedition should be a very short and fruitful one.

MISC