September 24, 2008

Dear Editor:

I last night listened to the Supervisor of Elections update the nation as to the progress made in the confirmation and registration process now well on the way in the professed attempt to clean up the electoral system in St. Kitts and Nevis. I have been a keen proponent of this stated objective of cleaning up the process for I see a transparent electoral system as the critical platform on which our democracy is erected. Fail at that and our democracy fails. Corrupt that and we embark on a brisk descent into anarchy.

The Supervisor of Elections is a constitutional construct designed to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process. It is the job of the holder of that office to ensure that the electoral laws are upheld and the electoral system is protected from the human tendency of political parties to corrupt it to suit their ends. I am afraid that the raw statistics emerging from the Supervisor’s update last evening demonstrate unequivocally that he is failing in his job of providing effective oversight of the process.

The Concerned Citizens Movement, of which I am a part, has complained bitterly to the Supervisor and to the Prime Minister himself that the electoral process in Nevis is being corrupted by the NRP Government in Nevis which is being ably aided and abetted by electoral officials. Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears and this unholy union of Government and electoral officials has continued merrily to the detriment they may think of the CCM but I say to the detriment of our democracy itself.

The Supervisor told us last night that in the District 9, the constituency which I am privileged to represent, the Voters’ List has grown by 316 new registrants in the period January to August, 2008. That is more than any other constituency in St. Kitts or Nevis and more than some of those constituencies combined. It is well known that St. Johns and St. Pauls are battleground constituencies but what these statistics reveal is the extent to which the NRP Government will go and has gone to try and pad the Voters’ List with their supporters from other parts of Nevis to make it as one of their operatives has openly boasted to me “impossible for me and CCM to win”.

The sheer numbers should be enough to excite the curiosity and suspicion of the Supervisor of Elections and his boss, the Prime Minister, especially against a backdrop of constant complaints from the CCM and from other citizens of this country. Let me be clear, something is terribly wrong at the electoral office in Nevis. The office has been allowed by the Supervisor of Election and the Prime Minister to become a near autonomous institution without oversight or control where the word of the Office Manager on any number of matters is law. Where the checks and balances fail, what happens to our cherished democratic ideals?

What does it say about those charged with protecting the integrity of the electoral system when little Nevis can have more registrations in District 9 than any other constituency in the Federation including St. Kits which is so much bigger and so much more populous? And why is it that the Supervisor’s suspicions have not been aroused when he sees this huge statistical anomaly? It cannot be that he has not noticed so what then are we to conclude?

I call on the Honourable Prime Minister and the Supervisor of Elections as well as the Electoral Commission to protect the integrity of our electoral process. This may well be thought by some to hurt CCM’s chances but we may well discover in the end that what is permanently damaged is the very foundation of our democracy. None of us should be willing to stand idly by and let that happen. We have worked too hard and too long to develop an enviable record of solid democratic traditions. I therefore issue the clarion call to all citizens of good will that we demand an immediate inquiry into the registrations in Nevis and in District 9 in particular to ascertain how it is, as the statistics suggest, the impossible has become possible.

I pray for my country that those with some modicum of decency left will rise up like a mighty army and condemn what we all know to be the rampant corruption of the electoral process in Nevis. The time for men and women of conscience to do nothing is long past. We must seek to protect our electoral process from the foxes guarding the hen house or we run the risk of losing our hens.

Respectfully,

Mark Brantley