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The government will be moving ahead with the general elections despite the fact that the redistricting process has not been completed. While both political parties have been rightly accused of "kicking the can down the road" for more than a decade, we asked Minister Usher if it's a failure of the PUP that after four years, the vast variances in constituency sizes have not been rectified:
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"Absolutely not. Because the report was submitted, on time, according to claim 55 of 2019, there was an agreement that the report had to be submitted to the National Assembly, also submitted to the claimants in that particular case. This was done in July of last year. There are issues with that report, of course. You I've heard what the government and the opposition speak on the issues in that report. But as I said back then, that report was rushed for two particular reasons. One, if you look at section 90 of the Constitution, it says that the Elections and Boundaries Commission is supposed to look at the total population when carrying out this redistricting process. How can you look at the total population when the census was not completed yet? They were going on erroneous figures. The last census was done in 2010, and then they were using our growth rate from 2010 that proved not to be accurate. So I said from the very beginning, you guys need to wait until the census is completed because it not only shows you the total population, but it shows you trends in the population. Where are people moving, urban areas, rural areas, what type of structures are being built, etc. the second reason why the report did not have full information is because those particular sections of the Constitution, 89, 90, 91, those sections contradict each other. Look at section 89. It says very clearly there shall be 31 constituencies. Section 90, subsection two says there shall not be less than 28. It. How can you have two conflicting sections in the Constitution? So the process of the PCC is supposed to look at these conflicting sections, consult with the people, see what exactly the people are seeing when it comes to areas such as that, and then come forward to give clarity to the election among this commission as to what exactly they can and cannot do. Also, there's no procedure in the Constitution to remove a seat. If you look at the history of redistricting in this country, they've always added seats. They've never removed a seat. I'm saying that you need constitutional authority to remove a seat. There is a process to add a seat. So the Election and Boundaries Commission has two authorities according to the Constitution, they are to look at the existing boundaries and they can change existing boundaries of the 31. Or if they feel that they want to add a seat, they need to take it to the National Assembly. There's nothing in there that says how they're supposed to remove a seat, or even if they can remove a seat."
