The riveting emergency Parliament sitting of Friday, January 16th, 2015 will be aired tomorrow, Friday, January 18th, 2019 at 10:00am and again at 8:15pm on ZIZ TV (Channel 5) and ZIZ’s website (https://zizonline.com/tv/channel-5/).  Please stay tuned for further rebroadcast times scheduled for this weekend.
Wednesday, January 16^th, 2019 marked four years since the then-St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party government hastily introduced a Proclamation into Parliament and passed a Resolution to change electoral constituency boundaries following an appalling display in the National Assembly.

The High Court issued an injunction later that Friday night to prevent those changes from taking place only to set it aside less than seven days later.  The Court of Appeal upheld the Court’s finding, but that was overturned just shy of a month later on Thursday, February 12^th, 2015 by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, England, which is the final court of appeal for St. Kitts and Nevis.

In Brantley and others (Appellants) v Constituency Boundaries Commission and others (Respondents) (St. Christopher and Nevis), which went before the Privy Council, members of the Team Unity alliance, then on the Opposition side, argued, inter alia, that the proclamation made by the Governor-General on January 16^th, 2015 – shortly after the relevant resolution was passed in the National Assembly of St. Kitts and Nevis on that same date – was not gazetted correctly.

The issue of the case before the Privy Council was “whether the Court of Appeal was correct to uphold the discharge of an interim injunction preventing the adoption of new electoral boundaries by the Prime Minister of St. Christopher and Nevis.”

On January 16^th, 2015, an emergency sitting of the National Assembly convened a little after 4:00pm – with some Opposition members having received notice of it less than 10 minutes before its start time, and others after – and lasted about one hour and 40 minutes; the proclamation was made at 6:20pm, and the injunction that Team Unity won was granted at 7:38pm and served on the Attorney General at approximately 8:20pm.  Also on that day, the then-Prime Minister announced at about 6:30pm on the steps of Government Headquarters that he had advised the Governor-General to dissolve the Parliament with immediate effect.

Four days before the general elections, the Privy Council declared in an oral decision on February 12^th, 2015 that, “It is determined and ordered that the list to be used in the…election is and shall be that existing prior to the proclamation…purportedly issued and published by the governor general.  Any effect which the said proclamation would continue otherwise to have, whether in relation to any other election or otherwise, is hereby suspended until further order.”

In the February 16^th, 2015 general elections, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party suffered a decisive defeat at the ballot box.

Almost four years later, Prime Minister Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris and his change-making Team Unity Administration continue to implement the will of the people and fulfill their pact to push through a Prosperity Agenda that will benefit all, irrespective of how they voted on February 16^th, 2015.