Reasons why NDP is contesting General Election

Editor: Last week the NDP Opposition Leader presented to us what the gripe is that his party and supporters have why they are still protesting and why they are holding their stand-off(s), so as to compel new elections, I suppose. {{more}}Sadly, my grandmother didn’t understand most of it, because there was quite a bit of legal and other verbiage and it wasn’t set out in a way, I think, that the common man could get a good grip of the content. For her sake and the others like her, I am attempting to summarize the presentation as I understand it so far, for the benefit of many of my fellow Vincentians, served on a side salad of humour to accompany this ongoing meat and potatoes issue. 

The NDP feels that the 2015 elections were not FREE or FAIR, and they want a go at it again for the following reasons:

1. The ULP could afford to give out lumber and they, the NDP, could only manage to give chicken; people went more for the lumber, so that wasn’t ‘fair’. It also wasn’t ‘free’ because the NDP had to pay for their stuff.

2. The NDP is accusing the ULP of not following the law and that the ULP is treading on democracy because they let their guy count the ballot which should have been voided. This, in the NDP’s view, was a legal ‘no-no’. In a sense that was not ‘fair’ to the ULP, but the NDP is blaming them because the ULP guy (obviously) should have known better not to allow the NDP candidate(s) to bamboozle him into getting the count without following the proper procedure. It therefore wasn’t ‘fair’ for the ULP to have allowed him to do that since the goose to gander ratio didn’t work out.

3. The NDP thinks it’s not right that the ULP should have the NDP’s complaints thrown out of court on legal technicalities. This means we the people can’t get to hear all the evidence they have collected so far, which is not democratic. It is, however, the way battles are fought and won in court, which is terribly unfair to the NDP, seeing the ULP team is nothing but lawyers. On a side note, the ULP chief is not as daft as some wish to claim. Everyone knows a country is run by ‘economics,’ but it is equally governed and directed by ‘laws’. (What a thing!)

Lastly, the NDP wishes us to come to conclusions in their favour, so as to help them in their fight for fresh elections, based on all the information they have gathered so far. They only can’t disclose all the stuff to us, seeing the matter is still pending in court. That being the case, it is not ‘fair’ to them, so they are going to keep protesting until such time that they can get to convince us regarding all their details. 

I hope I got everything right there; errors and omissions obviously exempted.

I am interested to see how this all pans out. The NDP’s modus operandi as a minority majority appears to be an interesting new rationale for operating their desired democracy, taking every matter into their own hands to achieve the outcome they seem to feel they deserve. As a voter, I was terribly annoyed at their invading and pressing to inspect ballots and/or to have votes counted or recounted without following the proper protocol. If they had done that at the outset, there surely would be no charges to be levied against the ULP or the Supervisor of Elections’ office at this point. I am wondering if their actions could also be constituted as a disenfranchisement of the people’s right to privacy in those recent elections. Let’s see what this all boils down to according to the court and the ongoing demonstrations.

Rizpah Steward