St Kitts and Nevis (WINN): The June 5 general election results showed the three-party Team Unity Coalition getting nine of the eleven seats, with the St Kitts Nevis Labour Party winning the other two.
Since then both the Labour Party and Coalition have filed election petitions.
The PAM/Team Unity candidate Ian Liburd who lost his seat in constituency number 1, has taken the matter to court.
The SKNLP has meantime filed at least five election petitions, hoping to overturn seats won by the coalition.
Prime Minister Harris, speaking at his press conference Friday, had earlier conceded that as part of the democratic process, the Labour Party has a right to file election petitions in court.
He, however, described these opposition petitions as frivolous.
Labour Party leader Denzil Douglas is meanwhile expressing optimism about the petition.
“Our party, your party will fight on, fight to ensure that over the next few months the arithmetic of justice will prevail, fairness will prevail, the arithmetic of democracy will prevail and the arithmetic of the people’s power will also prevail,” he said.
In relation to the Ian Liburd election petition, Prime Minister Harris explained why he thinks Liburd will be successful in court.
“With respect to our own challenge and that of the member, Mr Ian Patches Liburd, we are satisfied and our lawyers are satisfied that he has a case of merit. He has the services of some eminent lawyers from around the region. And one thing I know about his legal team, they don’t take cases if they are clear that they are going to lose. They are not going to waste the courts time and they are not going to waste their client’s time so we are satisfied about that. And again we are satisfied too that at least two different entities by and large looked at our elections and concluded that in the mean, it doesn’t mean that every particular isolated situation, but in the mean, taken as a whole the general elections reflected the will of the people.”
Dr Harris was referring to the CARICOM and Local Election Observer missions that both gave the elections a free and fair thumbs up.
