Head of the local election-monitoring organisation, Catholic cleric Monsignor Mike Stewart says that the group will release soon its report on the Dec. 9 general elections.
The National Monitoring and Consultative Mechanism (NMCM) is yet to release its report on the poll amidst political tension after the vote as the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) has dismissed the results as fraudulent.
Election officials say that the Unity Labour Party won the elections and a fourth term in office by a margin of eight seats to the NDP’s seven. But the NDP is claiming elections fraud and has filed two petitions.
Regional, hemispheric and international observers submitted reports days after the vote, saying that the vote was free and fair.
But the NDP says that it is waiting to see the NMCM’s report, saying that as a local monitoring body, they have a unique perspective on the election.
The actions of the ULP administration suggest that it ignored at least one of the NMCM’s suggestions ahead of the polls — that it suspends the distribution of building materials.
This, however, came to an abrupt end after the elections and a fire at the storage facility later destroyed a large amount of the materials, which the government said were for its social programmes, but the opposition claimed was used to sway voters.
“Well, the report is in draft and the report would be submitted soon. It would be given to the relevant authorities. I would say very soon,” Stewart told iWitness News on Tuesday when asked about the status of the report.
He said that he hopes it will be available “within a week”.
Asked why it is taking the NMCM so long to release the report, Stewart said:
“Well, of course, a report has to be prepared and one of the difficulties we’ve had is that the person who has been preparing the report has also been very ill and is recovering.”
He said secretary of the NMCM, Godfrey Samuel had been ill.
“But I say to you, the report will be out very soon,” Stewart told iWitness News.
My understanding is there have been ongoing arguments about the report content with some of the participants wanting the bad bits to omitted.
Very suspicious! With such a great amount of time since the election it is possible that negotiations are underway. “What can we get if our report suggests….?”
“Not enough, instead we want…”
This is how politics usually works. The last IMF report for SVG went this way. Certain powers did not want a bad report put out so the IMF was in a position to say that SVG will continue to have negative growth and will start to have growth in two years.
People! the IMF cannot accurately predict economics for 1 year let alone 2 years. How do they know what SVG economic policy will be two years into the future? Can they predict the Global Economy accurately? Could they predict who was to win the election? All speculation!
In this case we can expect the report will be favorable to the political party with the most money and that has a track record of cheating, if not, I will gain great respect for this council.
10 weeks and counting. I see that Mr. Samuel who is ill, is indispensable. I hope he recovers sufficiently to complete this report. Should he continue to be incapacitated, what would become of the report? Lost in his head forever? Someone else has to be able to complete that report. What is the truth here? Something stinks in SVG, and it is not just the fish market.
I wish Mr. Samuel a speedy recovery.