Less than two months after they were filed, the High Court has fixed a date for the case management hearings for the two A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) sponsored election petitions.
This was confirmed on Tuesday, when Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon revealed that acting Chief Justice Roxane George set October 22 as the date where all parties in the election petition case will have to participate in setting timelines.
“This afternoon, one of the lawyers for the petitioners received a response from the Chief Justice, indicating that there’s going to be a case management conference of this matter on October 22nd. So, on the 22nd of October, there’ll be a case management.”
“This is the place where they set timelines for things to happen, deadlines and when the actual hearing will start. So, this is what we anticipate, so the ball is rolling… the petition train is out of the station,” Harmon said.
APNU MP and lawyer Roysdale Forde
When contacted, Senior Counsel Roysdale Forde confirmed that a date has been set, where both of the election petitions will be discussed and timelines set. Forde, a Member of Parliament for APNU/AFC, expressed pleasure with the case being expedited, while noting that this is something that his party has pushed for.
“I believe that this decision is a response to the calls made by myself and other members of the Opposition. I wrote a letter, as you are aware, to the Chief Justice, asking for this matter to be brought up so the process can kick in. So, this is a favourable response to the efforts,” Forde said.
The petitioners in the first petition filed on August 31, 2020, are Heston Bostwick, an APNU/AFC Councillor at City Hall and Claudette Thorne. They both hail from Albouystown, Georgetown.
In this petition, the coalition had attached the form that embattled former Region Four Returning Officer Clairmont Mingo used to declare the results for Region Four, which listed the total number of valid votes for all lists as 217,425 for which APNU/AFC received 136,057 votes and the PPP/C 77,231 votes.
In actuality, the results of the National Recount found that there was a total of 202,077 ballots cast in Region Four, with 116,941 for APNU/AFC and 80,920 for PPP/C. As it relates to the overall elections, the gazetted results show that 460,352 valid votes were cast, with 233,336 for the PPP/C and 217,920 for APNU/AFC.
The petitioners in the second election petition are Monica Thomas of Lot 58 Norton Street, Lodge, Georgetown, and Bernnan Joette Natasha Nurse of Lot N16-1079 Critchlow Street, Tucville, Georgetown.
They contend that during the period January to August 2020, they were employed at the Office of the Elections Agent as Assistants to Harmon, who was appointed as Election Agent for the APNU/AFC.
In the petition, representatives of all the political parties which contested the elections and Chief Elections Officer (CEO) Keith Lowenfield, himself before the courts on multiple charges, are listed as the respondents.
Further, the duo submitted that there were instances when the evidence of the polling activities was not recorded in the available poll books; instances when ballots cast were unstamped, and instances when evidence to validate the issuance of ballots to proxies were missing.
These missing documents were all cited in the case brought before the High Court by APNU supporter Misenga Jones in the ultimately futile attempt to overturn Recount Order 60 of 2020. However, the High Court had ruled that the recount was valid and the results must be used, notwithstanding any such missing documents.
The PPP/C has insisted that the High Court should first hear the election petition filed by the party sometime after it lost the 2015 General and Regional Elections. It said that it is only fair that its petition, which has languished in the courts for years under the APNU/AFC Government, be heard before the ones filed by the coalition.
In its preliminary report following the March 2020 General and Regional Elections, the Commonwealth observer team expressed concern at the delays of the High Court in dealing with the 2015 elections petition filed by PPP/C member Ganga Persaud.
Head of the Commonwealth Observer Mission, the late former Prime Minister of Barbados Owen Arthur had said, “We were informed, for example, that an elections petition filed by the PPP/C following the 2015 elections is still pending before the High Court”.
