Dear Editor,
ANUG/TNM/LJP formed an alliance through the joinder list provision to contest the elections. One of the primary positions of this arrangement of these three parties, having won a seat in the National Assembly was that they would share the seat on a rotational basis i.e. something not provided for in the Repre-sentation of the Peoples Act, Chapter 1:03. Notwithstanding they have lawyers of the highest repute among this collective, not a single person from within these three parties recognized, discovered or acknowledged that the law is very specific on how the seat should be allocated.
In their state of blind ignorance, the representatives of the joinder list correctly submitted the name of Mr. Lennox Shuman to be appointed as a Member of Parliament. Upon the resignation of Mr. Shuman as a MP, the Representatives of the three Parties, having been lawfully notified by the Speaker of the National Assembly that a vacancy existed and needed to be filled, the three Represen-tatives of the joinder lists submitted the name of Dr. Asha Kissoon, to the Speaker, as the person to fill the vacancy. Apparently, at this time, one Mr. Gerald Forde had resigned from the TNM, and was replaced as Representative of the List of this party via internal maneuvers.
It is now public knowledge, through a pronouncement that was made by GECOM’s Legal Officer, that Section 97(5) of that Act Representation of the People Act provides that the seats allocated to a combination of lists, as in this case where the LJP, TNM and ANUG joined their lists, had to be further ‘allocated among the lists comprised in the combination’ in accordance with section 97(2) and (3). Considering that only one seat allocated to that combination, Section 97(3)(a) mandated that this ‘one seat shall be allocated to the list with the largest number of surplus votes’. As the LJP had the largest number of surplus votes of the parties in the combination, that seat had to be allocated to the LJP. There is no allowance for that seat to be rotated among the Parties in the combination.
Sincerely,
Joel Bhagwandin
