Former President of the United Workers Party (UWP) Isaac Baptiste has argued that the very discussions of electoral reform that are ongoing in Dominica have already been discussed and recommended for the past 15 years. He made the disclosure during a series of consultations on electoral reform which is ongoing at the State House Conference Center.
“This issue of electoral reform has been burning in Dominica since 2005,” he said. “We were getting close in 2022 with the report of Sir Dennis Byron, this report that we are now discussing, the process was aborted when the Prime Minister called the elections in 2022. That process was aborted and we are back to where we are.”
Baptiste continued, “I am asking myself, Isaac Baptiste, what is happening here?”
He added, “Because Dominicans, professionals, political parties have submitted reports, we have experts coming from overseas to observe our elections. The very discussions we are having here on recommendations have been discussed and recommended in every report for the past 15 years or more.”
He further argued that the process which is ongoing, seems that, “we are starting all over again.”
“When will the process end?” Baptiste asked.
Baptiste further asked how the country will go forward with the recommendations that are being discussed.
“The question is, when they are discussed again and having paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to discuss the same issues and we are back on the same issues again, what is the process of taking those recommendations we are discussing going forward? How are we going forward with them? What is it? I have not heard. The report and the recording we are doing, the transcript that we are undertaking, what happens to it after that?” He asked.
Moreover, Baptiste made it clear that the UWP has made many attempts for the removal of names on the electoral list that should not be there.
“As President of the United Workers Party, we on numerous occasions wrote to the electoral commissioner requesting and pointing out names on the electoral list that should not be there,” he said. “When I contested in 2014, over 400 names were submitted to the electoral commission and none was attended to.”
Furthermore, he revealed that during the 2019 general elections names were also submitted, to the point where he as president of the party wrote to the Chief Elections Officer pointing out to him the fact that these names should be removed.
“The process was aborted with the calling of elections for December 2019…,” he stated.
Meantime, while touching on the issue of registration of voters, Baptiste is calling for a complete re-registration of voters on the electoral list.
“I prefer and advise and suggest that the preferred should be to have a complete re-registration of voters, so you can register voters in the constituency where they reside.” he said.
He indicated that over the past 20 years, there has been considerable movement of persons in populations in new communities.
“And therefore, for example, I live at Castle Bruce, I live at Castle Comfort as well. I can register at Castle Bruce, I can also register at Castle Comfort,” Baptiste explained. “There are persons because of marriage…because of employment… so the disparity in the population in the various constituencies is very wide because of population shift…”
Baptiste continued, “So if we are arguing that the reasons why we want to have persons living overseas to be able to vote for functional reasons because they have a relationship with the country, then why would you want persons who have no functional relationship in a community, in a constituency where they have no interest in?”
The discussions on electoral reform continue tonight having begun at 7:00 pm with members of the diaspora who will join via Zoom
Baptiste, the process will end when UWP stop being too commanding and always want things THEIR WAY. They must understand they are in the minority THEY can have their way but the majority has it’s way.
a)Anyone who leaves outside of Dominica should be removed from the voter list.
b)For people whose name shave been removed , they can be reinstated after returning to Dominica for more than 3 months and register in the constituency where they now live. (not where they are originally from.)
c)Do I have to say that the names of dead people should be removed form the voter’s list? Or is this a given? It still has not been done.
d)No political party should have monopoly over the national run media houses.
e) Voter shall only vote in ONE Constituency.
f) Campaign financing will be limited to $100. per person in each constituency .
This present regime needs to be schooled by real legal luminaries.
g) Going oversees to certify of register voters is a gimmick that should never happened.
H) No Gov’t should pay for voters to return to Dominica to vote. Obviously if a Palrep pays for Rayburn and Vince come to Da to vote its oblivious that he is expecting Rayburn and Vince to vote…
No Prime Minister should be allowed to serve for more than 10 years.
Petes, go get some sleep. Something told me you are drunk. You have been driving under the influence for too long and, it has to stop.
@Dominica’s Own
The biggest issue i have with Skerrit, the Starboy of Stupidity, re those reforms is that of TRUST. After 23 years as a parliamentarian, who can trust Skerrit? Ian Douglas told the world, if you are seated with Skerrit at a table, and you take 15 seconds off, to get a glass of water to assuage your thirst, Skerrit is already saying something negative about you. Roosie, Pierro, Osborne Riviere, Matthew Walter, any myriad more real labourites never trusted him! How can one trust a leader who does not respect constitutions? What has happened to the DLP Constitution? Haven’t Skerrit render it useless? Does he obey Dominica’s constitution? OMG!!
I do agree with you Issac, that these Con-salt-ta-tions are a farce and mockery of the Dominican people’s money and time. The plans of how this thing will be finalized has been made and this fiasco is a show of engagement for the observers.
You know, a few months ago this man was on a platform warning Skerrit against simply “rushing” recommendations to Parliament. Now, he complains about a “rehashed” consultative process on recommendations that he and his ilk have made! Unbelievable.
A confused bunch, these Workers. Very confused!!
@Putin
But do you know the meanng of “rehash” at all? If you did, you would have agreed that he is 100% correct. WHY? Because what is being discussed have been told to us by teams of experts from:
CARICOM
COMMONWEALTH
MIA MOTLEY
THE OAS
RELIGIOUS, CIVIC and BUSINESS ORGANISATIONS, over and over.
So Baptiste is indeed a man of wisdom, and i give full unwavering and unflinching support to what he said.
Well said Sir!
You are a LIAR.The election observers in every election has always said the election held in Dominica was FREE and FAIR and reflected the will of the PEOPLE according to the electoral law of Dominica.That is why UWP has gone to court over and over again and lost.
Issac cannot request the removal of any person name from any election list if he is not registered in that polling district.It has to be done by somebody registered in that district or constituency.That is fraud.Any changes in the constitution must go to parliament.
If Government had embraced those recommendations hook line and sinker, you would be here saying it is kowtowing. Instead, they did better. They gave you the opportunity to describe in your own words the modernization that you wish to see. What comes from all of this is a home-grown modernization agenda. Yet, you complain.
You will get electoral modernization. It will never be all that you wish and it still will not miraculously result in a win for the UWPwee. Dominicans doh want the UWPwee. So, get ready to keep bitching for the next decades.
Exactly right, Mr. Baptiste. Skerrit just keeps delaying the issue at hand. Electoral reform has been discussed for the past 20 years but Skerrit throws millions at this again in the hope he might succeed in putting a smoke screen around the issue and fool Dominicans again. Let’s stop this man. He has done enough damage!!
Issac Baptiste is already a rehash, that is why nobody takes that sorry as……….. on. His face looks like he has been rehashed like hash browns for breakfast.
Stop wasting time in Skerrit’s sham electoral reform. Skerrit knows he can’t win an election if there is true reform so he will never give us reform. If we want reform we have to take and the only way to take it is the Anthony Astaphan way, which is the Constitutional cool wosh bregade way that he told us is legal. So stop that talking and let’s do it Tony’s way especially while he is in Dominica so he can be part of it