The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A FIGHT over a failure to seal cast ballot envelopes punctuated an at times chaotic day of advanced polling in New Providence yesterday.

High drama erupted at the Sadie Curtis Primary School yesterday evening as party officials questioned the actions of the returning officer for the Pinewood constituency.

Myles Laroda, the Progressive Liberal Party’s candidate for Pinewood, said it took about one and a half hours for representatives from different parties to convince the officer to seal the envelope with cast ballots. In the interim, some supporters of various parties cast aspersions on the process and claimed an attempt was underway to “steal” the election.

Mr Laroda told The Tribune: “At the end of voting at 6pm, after going through the ballots, the ballots you start with, the used ballots, the unused ballots, usually the cast ballots by constituents are placed in one envelope. That envelope is then sealed and signed by the relevant parties, their leaders or their representatives in the room. What happened today was that in both of the ballot boxes for Pinewood, the cast ballots were left at the bottom of the ballot box and they were not in a sealed envelope.

“When the issue was raised to me by both agents in the room, I then spoke to the returning officer who confirmed to me that the ballot was left at the bottom of the ballot box. He said he was given instructions not to touch the cast ballots. I then said to him that this was the first time doing an election I saw a situation where the cast ballots were not placed in an envelope and sealed.

“I spoke to Steven Nesbit of the DNA, Lincoln Bain of the Coalition. We went back to the returning officer and got no relief. We then spoke to Reuben Rahming. As a group of four we went to the returning officer and asked him to rectify the issue. On the third attempt he agreed to return both ballot boxes to the school where they were both emptied and it was discovered that cast ballots were not in a sealed envelope. They were then placed in a sealed envelope and signed off by the various agents and then the box was locked.

“At the end of the day the matter was settled.”

Before the matter was resolved, the ballot boxes were sitting in a bus. Mr Laroda did not say he believes the ballots could have been tampered with in the interim.

“I’m never gonna cast aspersions on the police and senior civil servants,” he said. “I would hate to believe that leaders of the country would do something as blatant as that, but I would say it was chaotic and the matter could have been rectified in the room because it was raised in the room. The issue was raised by the agent even before those boxes left the room and were taken to the bus. There was enough chance for them to be in a sealed envelope.

“It was rectified but it was very, very frustrating having done this process before, that we had a situation where ballots were left unsealed in an envelope. That caused angst and anxiety among all of the candidates.”

Mr Laroda said the whole day was chaotic, noting that earlier, elderly people were directed to the same line as young people.

“Only an hour later another line was created where senior citizens were allowed to go.”

Last night, PLP chairman Fred Mitchell said he asked Attorney General Carl Bethel in a formal letter yesterday to address the chaos at the advanced poll and ensure the problems do not recur on September 16.

“The standard practice is you take the box and seal it in the presence of all of the agents,” he said. “I’m not surprised our agents are concerned about that not taking place. I was instructed by the leader of the party to write the AG this evening about the general state of the chaos and to ask that they take appropriate measures to ensure this does not repeat itself on the day of the general election.

“It is not acceptable to have people wait in lines (for) three hours to go and vote. The law itself allows only two hours to vote from work so clearly this was anticipated to be a quick process,” Mr Mitchell said.