By: Staff Writer
November 15, 2022
The leader of the United Workers Party said that they are readying lawyers to take snap election irregularities to court by the end of this week, but the December 6 election day boycott is still on.
Francisca Joseph, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that the recent snap elections are wrought with irregularities that cannot and should not be ignored. “All countries that have a voters list have with it a voter’s ID card. All countries have this.
“But we have a bloated list that is bigger than the population. We have so many dead people on the list and so many ghosts voting. We have seen this.”
A clean voter’s register is something that would settle the UWP in the interim and then they would begin to negotiate for “equal access” to the state radio and also transparent campaign financing because she says the UWP is at a distinct disadvantage compared to the ruling Dominica Labour Party (DLP) heading by the Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit.
Ms Joseph also said: “We can field a full slate of candidates this time around because we would have had done a full slate in 2019. Since we got our letter from Sir (Dennis) Byron, we feel he is getting his act together. We are getting there. We are working on this.”
The December 6 election comes well ahead of the scheduled election year for Dominica, which would be in 2024, which further leaves the UWP in a confusing state because they have recently changed their leader to Ms Joseph from Lennox Linton earlier this year. Something Prime Minister Skerrit has capitalised on by saying the UWP is confused over who their leader should be. No doubt he is taking advantage of their disarray.
Ms Joseph maintains that Dominica deserves a clean voter’s register and people to be equipped with national identification for when they come to vote. This goes at the heart of democracy and if need be they will file an injunction in court.
She added: “I cannot give you the date right now on when we are going to file, but we are going to file. We have lawyers working and they will let us know exactly what is going to happen.”