Opinion: Saint Vincents Court of Public Opinion
By Jolly Green
Regardless of the March 21, 2019, ruling of Judge Stanley John in the matter of the SVG Election Petitions, the Court of Public Opinion who followed the issue closely may give a different verdict. Judges have to follow legal guidelines and laws; the public often follows its heart and head in the Court of Public Opinion.
“Election fraud” is a generic term. Laws, however, are specific. You either followed the law or you didn’t. In the SVG election, it has been proved without any doubt that many legal processes were not followed. They may or may not have been mistakes by election officials, regardless, therefore, the law was not observed, perhaps by default but that is inexcusable and unforgivable. Maybe excusable in the mind of a Judge perhaps not forgivable in the mind of public opinion.
When numbers don’t add up to their self, they are called impossible numbers. In such cases, exactly which numbers were true or false may be unknowable, especially if the chain of evidence was breached. When you break the chain of custody, you can recount ballots ’till the cows come home, but when you don’t know if the ballots are the real ones, recounting won’t cure uncertainty.
So when there are in one box more counterfoils than ballots that should send all kinds of messages to all corners of the State.
The court refused to allow inspection of the ballot boxes. Such inspection would have helped prove what went on with those boxes. This is not a matter of political party fishing; it is a matter of court officials carrying out a forensic-style investigation. We can never be sure if members of the ULP hierarchy have not already rifled and contaminated those boxes, even in correcting the contents contaminated the evidence. During a previous election, one Julian Francis said he knew who voted for him and how many Syrians voted, such precise information that can only come from examining the contents of a ballot box.
During the hearing there were so many happening going on that was called by government lawyers, mistakes, not one or two but numerous incidents that when added together makes a full circle . One voting station official even admitted she took the ballot box home with her and kept it overnight in her house.
Why did the Gonsalves led ULP government need to spend what is believed by some to be 5 million dollars trying to stop the Petitions Court hearing ever taking place. If they did nothing wrong that money must have been misspent and wasted. If they had done something wrong, there was a need to spend big money to try and avoid getting found out.
Most members of the public will realize that if you have done something wrong, you need strong representation in court if you have done absolutely nothing wrong you need little or no defense.
But the ULP government employed highly trained and highly paid international and regional lawyers to try and stop the case from ever coming to Court.
Ralph Gonsalves was sworn in as Prime Minister while there were count disputes and before taking into consideration any objections. The whole thing was a rush, and the Governor General bowed to the request for Gonsalves to head a government, unless the Supervisor of elections had signed off on the contest figures prematurely perhaps.
The following has nothing to do with the petitions court case because it was not part of the pleadings. In the weeks and days leading up to the election, the Unity Labour Party and their representatives gave away all sorts of building materials, livestock, and money in envelopes. The traditional gifts like T-shirts and strong rum were also given, but the most in value were the building materials. Not just a few thousand dollars worth’s, not only a few hundred thousand worth but multi-millions. All stocks of building supplies held in government yards and warehouses, lumber, cement, galvanized roofing, paint, and reinforcing steel. The yards and warehouses had been fully stocked over the preceding few weeks and months to the point of overflow. After election day nothing was left, the cupboard was bare. They also imported from Jamaica upward of twenty million dollars in their name and distributed that also. So when people say it’s traditional and it’s just little building materials, it’s not it’s vast and very, very wrong. It is quite simply election bribery. A Bum-Bum recipient told me that he was told by a ULP representative that if the NDP won they would have the building materials taken away from him and he would be locked up, so best vote ULP. I also know a man who was told to pull down his wooden house on the promise of cement, blocks, lumber, and roofing to build a new house, he got nothing but a promise for the next election. These were provable illegal acts and ran contrary to St. Vincent and the Grenadines: Electoral Law, Representation of the Peoples Act.
Of course, I know, and we all know that the matter of this type of corrupt practice was not part of the court matter. But this has been reported on in the past and few if anyone cared about those exposés.
2010 https://kentonxtchance.wordpress.com/tag/election-fraud-in-st-vincent/page/3/
Police everywhere are responsible for investigating any allegations of electoral fraud.
May 6, 2010 – Police forces across England are probing allegations of electoral fraud.
Apr 30, 2012 – Police open probe into alleged voter fraud in East London.
Mar 17, 2015 – UK Police opened 51 investigations on related to alleged voting fraud ranging from impersonation, stolen ballots and threats.
May 10, 2016. Warwickshire Police investigate alleged electoral fraud.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-36258963
Oct 28, 2016 – Iowa capital, police investigate alleged voter fraud.
May 25, 2017. Cayman Island Police continue to investigate allegations of vote buying and voter fraud.
http://cayman27.ky/2017/05/police-continue-to-investigate-vote-buying-fraud-allegations/
Apr 11, 2017 – Serbian Police Probe Alleged Election Fraud
Mar 22, 2018 – Sierra Leonean police investigating alleged election irregularities.
Oct 31, 2018 – Solomon Islands Police have established a new team to investigate possible election fraud.
October 2018, Vancouver Police investigate election fraud allegations.
2018, UK police forces investigated 266 cases of alleged electoral fraud.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/electoral-fraud/data-and-analysis
These are but a few reports of investigations; there are hundreds, all involving police in numerous different countries, not one investigation by SVG police in 20 years. Why?
In almost every country in the World, the police investigate any allegations of election fraud. Report election fraud to Vincentian police and they will probably take you to the interview room and beat you half to death, then arrest you for assaulting them. In SVG the police watched as truck after truck passed the police stations loaded with stolen government building materials. Do they investigate and make arrests? No, of course, they don’t because some of the trucks are going to their homes and their friends and families homes. The police have taken it on themselves to be a private police force of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves; they would never investigate allegations of election fraud unless he told them to. They know all about the outflow of materials to bribe the electorate and do nothing, absolutely nothing. I doubt the Vincentian police have ever investigated any election fraud allegation, anytime, anywhere.
It has taken over three years to bring the petitions case to court because the ULP government and their lawyers frustrated the process. Those matters should have, and could have been heard and decided on within three months, not almost four years; it’s a travesty of justice.
This is what you can expect when you’re in bed with the suchlike of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, it’s a mirrored image of how he cons the Venezuelan people.
It would be great if the US State Department canceled all US visas to Vincentian police and selected politicians and their family members. Take away the privileges and insist on US officials to report on the next SVG elections. Try and stop the blatant multi-million dollar bribery of voters with building materials, livestock, household goods and money in envelopes. This was not a matter of $5000 worth of T-shirts given away; this was a matter of 50 million dollars of building materials given away to bribe the outcome of the elections.
This commentary by me is not supposed to be disrespectful to the Honourable Court or the Honourable Judge Stanley John. In general, it is about more than what he had the jurisdiction to preside over but does contain some of the petitions case because it is related. My apologies if anyone feels insulted in any way, that was not my intention expressed or implied.
Jolly Green
Read the coming important follow up, coming mid week at news media near you
Has the Unity Labour Party, Dr Ralph Gonsalves and Vincentian Police turned themselves and at least half of the citizenship into Criminals.
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DISCLAMER: The opinion, belief and viewpoint expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinion, belief and viewpoint of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com or official policies of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com
