By Floyd French
Observer Reporter
(St. Kitts) – Deputy Political Leader of the People’s Action Movement, Mr. Eugene Hamilton, said the May 22-31 confirmation exercise in Cayon was done in an atmosphere of intimidation. The Deputy Leader also said that the charges made against him by Supervisor of Elections, Pastor Leroy Benjamin, were inaccurate and the reports the supervisor received stemmed from acrimony between an electoral officer in charge and him.
According to Hamilton, on the first day he was asked to produce an affidavit for one of the registrants he brought to the Confirmation Centre. He then called the supervisor who allowed him to attest to the identity of the registrant.
“He [Mr. Benjamin] gave her some instructions on the phone [and] from that moment he gave her the instructions on the phone she has taken an attitude with me. She means she has to get back at me,” Hamilton said.
The hostility between the officer and Hamilton escalated to a point, according to Hamilton, when the officer called him a fool. He said the Supervisor’s scathing letter was the end product of the acrimony between the officer and him.
The officer did not provide her name and the Manager of the Electoral Office, Mr. Oliver Knight, has refused to name the officer.
“None of the charges that you [Mr. Benjamin] have indicated in your letter are accurate and in your capacity as Supervisor of Elections you have the responsibility to ensure that any charges that you allege are correct, especially since you have indulged the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police,” Hamilton’s letter to the supervisor dated May 27 states.
In Mr. Hamilton’s account, the supervisor’s criticism seems to be motivated by a photograph he took of equipment at the Confirmation Centre. “So it is that photograph I took, and it is that photograph it seems to have outraged the Supervisor in his letter.”
Mr. Hamilton challenged the integrity of the confirmation exercise. He said that equipment owned by the Labour Party was used to collect data for the Electoral Office and that compromised the process. He insisted that the photographs he took were of an office in the Community Centre, the site of the confirmation, which was not under the control of the Supervisor’s office.
The atmosphere of intimidation, at the heart of Mr. Hamilton’s refute, seemed to have been sustained by the electoral officer.
“The young lady who ran that office out there [in Cayon] and is still running the office in Keys, everyday she comes to work in a red shirt demonstrating to the people who are registering,” he said. “I have no problem with people wearing red, but something has got to be wrong if the person in charge is in red everyday. Red is a party colour and it is a subtle, distinct message,”
A visit to the Keys Confirmation Centre on June 4 revealed an electoral officer dressed in a red and white blouse, the red prominently displayed at the top. Mr. Hamilton said that it appears that the Officer has decided to tone it down after the criticism.
“Previous [Electoral] Office Manager, Mr. Amory was careful to tell his staff that the gold and the red are known party colours and though they may be worn it must not be seen as if you have some partisan preference in the clothing you wear in conducting your appointed duties.
“In this particular Administration there appears to be no sense of understanding of that, no control, and so it is there for everyone to see,” Mr. Hamilton added.
Mr. Hamilton also said that Labour Party activists were too involved in the process and contributed to the atmosphere of intimidation.
“There were people working in government who were given leave to carry out Labour Party activist work who was there at the Office of Confirmation in Cayon directing every traffic going into the registration process, interacting with all the customers of the Supervisor telling them who must go in and who must not go in, where they must go, sit down and wait.
“I applaud her for trying to bring some order, but it is wrong of the Supervisor to have an activist of the Labour Party carrying out that function,” Mr. Hamilton said.
He said the group of 15 Labour activists, wearing their party shirts, were calling people “ungrateful” as they made their way to confirm.
“So the ungrateful people, some of them say, they were not going there to confirm with those people because they don’t understand why they had to be sitting out there,” Mr. Hamilton pointed out.
Meanwhile the Electoral Office has announced that the Conaree confirmation exercise will be next week, June 9-14. It was originally slated for June 2-7.
