Roosevelt Skerrit, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica arrives to the Microsoft Theater for the opening ceremonies of the IX Summit of the Americas on June 08, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.
Picture by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photos
4 folks have been arrested and charged with illegal meeting following riots in Dominica’s capital, Roseau, final week as opposition parts protested in opposition to a sequence of electoral reforms being debated by the island’s parliament.
Police fired teargas canisters and rubber bullets as they tried to disperse offended opposition supporters as protesters threw rocks and different objects at police, rushed them at barricades, and customarily participated in what officers mentioned was a riotous state of affairs. No critical accidents had been reported.
Lengthy-serving Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit condemned the motion, which he mentioned was organized by the primary opposition United Employees Social gathering (UWP), blaming it on “misinformation and deliberate agitation. What we noticed yesterday was not a pure response to electoral reform. Folks world wide normally struggle for electoral reform, not in opposition to it. They don’t want reform. They need chaos, believing it could serve their political ambitions,” he mentioned in a nationwide tackle.
UWP supporters say they took to the streets to rail in opposition to a number of reform payments within the political environment since 2023 following a assessment of native legal guidelines by former Caribbean Court docket of Justice Chief Choose Sir Dennis Byron.
For instance, the suggestions had referred to as for residents residing overseas to go to Dominica and be certain that their names had been on the official voter’s listing. The reforms additionally name for the issuance of latest voter identification playing cards, the availability of digital voting programs, and the creation of an electoral fee fund to make sure seamless operations.
The UWP prices that the groundwork is being ready to provide the governing Freedom Social gathering a bonus in any upcoming elections, prices Skeriit has denied, saying that the UWP is the one which had been demanding reforms for years. The invoice has since been handed as the federal government has a 19-2 majority in the home.
The celebration suffered a big blow throughout debates when opposition lawmaker Anthony Fees voted with the federal government. He argued that the reforms had been essential.
“I stand for the payments to be handed. We now have to begin someplace. That is about democracy. I need to placed on file that I’m recommending that we have to begin it and I’m going to be a type of who’s going to begin it by passing this invoice as we speak,” he mentioned to loud thumping from the federal government benches.
These arrested are to look in court docket this week on misdemeanor prices.
Final week’s clashes had been characterised as among the many worst in native historical past.
