By Christine St Marie
DOMINICA– WITH elections in the air, Opposition Leader Lennox Linton has responded to Prime Minister Dr Roosevelt Skerrit’s claims that the Opposition is the “stumbling block” to electoral reform.
The prime minister made the claim while speaking with Dominicans during a recent visit to Barbados.
Skerrit stated that he has injected EC$6 million into electoral reform and has given the Electoral Commission the resources it needed to start the process.
Speaking to AZPNews on Monday, Linton said the Government needed to provide additional funds to the Electoral Commission for the verification process to “clear the voting list.”
He said the government has failed to do so.
Linton said, “The government has frustrated the verification process by refusing to grant an additional $300,000 to pay enumerators.”
The Electoral Commission told a local media entity that the legislative framework is not in place to issue national identification cards.
In Barbados Skerrit said his government had tabled a bill in Parliament but it was not supported by the Opposition.
The prime minister said his administration wrote to the Opposition requesting their input on the amendments to the Bill, but the Opposition was yet to respond.
Linton however told AZPNews that the Opposition objected to certain clauses of the Registration of Electors (Amendement) Bill as it sought to “bribe” voters.
He said it was not political parties that were responsible for electoral reform, but the Electoral Commission and believed that the Commission was in a position to begin the reform process.
Linton said, “No electoral reform, no elections.”
