DEAR EDITOR

• Dear Editor,

By Dr Clayton Shillingford

As a concerned citizen of Dominica, I would like to express grave disappointment in the present situation in Dominica.

I am very much aware of the numerous attempts and the unrelenting efforts which have been made for free and fair elections in Dominica to no avail. Up to the eleventh hour even though the election has been called without such reforms the people are still on the streets expressing their dissatisfaction and anger.

This is putting the country and its citizens in a very volatile situation. Never mind the bleatings from the likes of Parry Bellot, Petrolina Savarin other labor party operatives, enablers and defenders, it is abundantly evident that the DLP intends to repeat the strategy.of bribing vulnerable voters from overseas. The FACTUAL agenda is as follows

1. refusal to sanitize the bloated voters lists and provide ID Cards in spite of widespread protests over years
2. complicity of the electoral commission in that plan supported by DLP attorney Tony Astaphan. The objective to avoid tarnishing Skerrit’s “legacy” 
3. arrest, tear gas and harassment, court charges of protesters and opposition
4. attempt to frame the leader of the opposition with complicity of the police.
5. rejection of the recommendations of the OAS, CARICOM, COMMONWEALTH mission to sanitize voters lists and introduce ID cards
6. mounting of political campaigns by wife of Skerrit and others in other islands to seek vulnerable voters
7. alleged use of public funds to finance DLP campaign
8. similarly seeking voters by similar process in N.America aided by Government ambassadorial and consular services
9. dragging public servants into partisan conduct in violation of public service rules
10. illegal use of Government resources for partisan DLP political activity
11. barring the Opposition from state owned media..
12. paying for airfares and ferries to bring overseas Dominicans to be escorted by police to targeted constituencies 
13. the expected result theft of the election by unlawful and undemocratic means .

The current burning question in this national crisis is wiill people of conscience and civic organisations  the church, bar association etc allow a corrupt election and reestablishment of a corrupt regime for another five years and tendency to one party state and impending threat of dictatorship.