By: Staff Writer
December 6, 2022
DOMINICA: The leader of the Opposition United Workers Party (UWP) warned against the excessive spending being done by Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit for the December 6 general election despite no official Opposition contesting.
Francisca Joseph, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that Prime Minister Skerrit has been spending “lots of money” despite being in power for the last 20 years and also having no Official Opposition Party running in today’s general election due to her UWP party deciding to sit it out over longstanding election irregularities that were never resolved up to Skerrit’s snap election call.
No one knows where all of this extra cash is coming from in the Dominica Labour Party Ms Skerrit heads, despite some suggesting that it signals the powerful Citizenship by Investment programme yielding the DLP powerful and wealthy allies who wish to secure opportunities for a foothold in the Caribbean.
This aside, the general election was held today and results will be confirmed by the following morning, but with no Opposition running in the election the results seem to be all but a foregone conclusion. Polls will be closed by the time this magazine goes to publish, but we will have a firm report for our readers in the upcoming Friday edition.
The Organisation of American States (OAS) delegation, led by former Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas Perry G Christie, said that through their observations there has not been any major signs that would warrant any significant concerns about the way the election was conducted. However, they have made several minor observations that they will share in their ensuing report.
Ms Joseph also said: “We are urging our supporters to act peacefully and to not disrupt any of the election proceedings. We have just been having constituency meetings, telling our supporters of our decision and trying to see how best we can support them.”
Constituency meetings is all Ms Joseph and the UWP intended to do for this election as her party’s decision to sit it out was not an easy one, but one that “was the right thing to do,” when faced with the odds the UWP was faced with, including; Lack of access to the media for equal coverage; and the need for an updated voter’s registration list along with voter identification cards.
All of these issues have been detailed in a pre-election report delivered by Sir Dennis Byron, which Ms Joseph says she has a copy of and her party is going through it. She indicated nothing in the report would change her mind about the election despite nomination day being well behind them now at this eleventh hour, because any reforms in Dominica would have to go through parliament to be passed into law and then the public education exercises would need to be done to inform the public on what has changed. “Our first order of business is to ensure that we have the reform that we are asking for the report from Byron that has already been released. So we are waiting. That is what we’ll do and we will agitate and protest for this to ensure that reform happens,” she said.
When asked if the UWP will still head to have the matter heard in the courts, Ms Joseph said: “We have to register all those things, because you never know.
“Sometimes some may ask you what did you do legal on the legal front and we will do so. And we have been doing so for the longest while and that is why when the CCJ (Caribbean Court of Justice) gave, not a ruling, per se, but they gave some information and some guidance, we ought not to proceed to proceed… because the first thing that happened was the list that we used for the election of 2019 was not the correct list and that alone had to declare election null and void.”
None of the sitting UWP members of parliament are running for re-election either as Ms Joseph insisted that this decision to sit out was a “party decision” and they all stand behind her as leader through this strange process.