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Election candidates (L-R) Oral Selver, Edward Smith and Amanda Missick

By Caribbean News Now contributor

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos Islands -- An unsuccessful candidate in the recent general elections in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) has reportedly filed a legal challenge to the result in his constituency. A second such challenge in another constituency has also reportedly been filed.

Given that the winning party in the election, the Progressive National Party (PNP), obtained only an eight to seven seat majority over the other main party, the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), any successful challenge could result in an immediate change of government, raising the spectre of a similar situation in 2003 when the situation was reversed and a successful challenge by the PNP in one district resulted in a by-election in which the PNP prevailed, thereby giving them the government.

The petition filed by PDM candidate Oral Isaac Selver in relation to Electoral District Number 7 (Cheshire Hall and Richmond Hills, Providenciales) is grounded in an alleged failure by a third party candidate, Edward E. Smith of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), to declare his US citizenship.

Section 49(1)(a) of the TCI constitution provides that “No person shall be qualified to be an elected member of the House of Assembly who, on the date of his or her nomination for election… is, by virtue of his or her own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to any foreign power or state.

Section 50(1) of the constitution goes on to provide that “Each candidate for election to the House of Assembly shall, on the date of his or her nomination for election, make a written declaration to the Supervisor of Elections that he or she is qualified for election under section 46 and that no disqualification mentioned in section 49 applies to him or her.”

Further, under subsection (2) “The Supervisor of Elections shall publish any declaration made to him or her under subsection (1) by the close of the next following working day” and “(3) Within five days of the publication of any such declaration, a challenge to the veracity of that declaration may be brought by any registered elector or by the Attorney General before the Supreme Court.”

Selver claims in his petition that, at the time Smith made his declaration to the supervisor of elections under section 50(1) of the constitution on October 25, 2012, he was disqualified for election to the House of Assembly under section 49(a) of the constitution because he (Smith) is a citizen of the United States of America, a foreign power, and is under an acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to that country being the holder of that country’s passport.

Selver claims further that the Supervisor of Elections, Dudly Lewis, failed in his duty to ensure that Smith was qualified to be nominated as a candidate in the general election to be elected as a member of the House of Assembly and that Lewis further failed to publish such candidate declarations within the time limit required by the constitution, thereby denying opposing candidates the opportunity to challenge such nomination(s) prior to the election.

In the constituency ballot, Selver received 364 votes, Smith received 58 votes and the successful PNP candidate Amanda A. Missick received 394 votes.

As the difference between the top two candidates was only 30 votes, Selver claims that, if Smith had been declared as unqualified prior to the election, the 58 votes cast for Smith could have accrued to the other candidates, thereby having the potential to affect the outcome of the election, which according to local sources is the benchmark the court must use in deciding whether or not to overturn a result.

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2 da Pointe:

From projections, in order to win, of the 58 votes, he must first get 30 to make it even 394 to 394, then of the remaining 28, he must get 50% (14) + 1 = 45 of the 58 or 78%.

Well, hell, overall he got 44% at the polls, the PDM got 51% country-wide, why does OS believe he would had received 78% of the Smith's 58 votes?

Dumb!