by Eulana Weekes
St. Kitts and Nevis (WINN): The general consensus from the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force is that the behaviour of the public over the course of the election was fair.
Superintendent Cromwell Henry of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force said despite much talk that the police would have lots of work to do for the election, that was proven not to be true.
“I’m always of the philosophy that if you educate the public you will have less enforcement and so, an educated public would turn out to be an educated public and we have proven that. We were hearing that this election was going to be messy and the police were going to have lots of work on their hands to do, but I was always confident in our people. I know [that] our people know when to behave and our people can behave and they have proven me correct. They have listened to our admonishments. They cooperated on election day.”
The Superintendent of Police confirmed that there was no crime and violence committed on election day, adding that the police had no challenges in getting individuals to follow orders.
“I haven’t heard of any instances where the police had any difficulty in getting persons at the polling station or anywhere else to cooperate. Whatever the police asked, [people] cooperated. There was no violence. Of course, there were a few flare ups here and there. We know emotions would flare at times and that is expected; that is understandable, but it was controlled emotions. Persons did not reach to the point where they became physical and violated other persons rights.”
According to Superintendent Henry, leading up to election day, there were a few instances where the police had to address reports of vandalism or removal of party signs. There was also a fire, which Henry said is still under investigation. As such, the Superintendent explained that those incidents were not widespread and prevalent and commended the public on their good behaviour.
“We cannot say thank you enough to our people and we really urge you to continue this good behaviour. We know that there are some persons who would not be as jubilant [or] as happy, we want to thank those persons for their restraint. In sports, some will win and some will lose and how you take your beating sometimes is what makes you the person [you are]. So we ask those persons who may not have been as successful as they would have liked to, take it in good faith and let us resolve to get up and dust off and continue the nation building which is [the responsibility of all of us].”
