National Security Minister Dr. Bernard Nottage.
NATIONAL Security Minister Dr. Bernard Nottage, who has responsibility for elections, was unemotional yesterday in the face of the outrage Bahamians have expressed over the Parliamentary Registration Department’s confusing and delayed process in announcing results of Tuesday’s constitutional referendum.
“I don’t know what went wrong or if anything went wrong,” he told reporters at the House of Assembly.
He said the number of questions on the ballot, coupled with issues like scattered power outages, contributed to the delay in the release of results.
“What I know is this,” he said, “the four questions were on each ballot and each ballot therefore had to be examined. The examination takes a lot longer because you had to count ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for each of the questions. And so this is one of the things that served the process bad. Secondly, I understand that there were some power outages that affected the process of getting the results from some areas. That’s it. I don’t think there was any particular motive.”
A day after the referendum, the results from some polling stations still had not been released. And on Tuesday night, the Parliamentary Registration Department released results for only six of 38 constituencies. Additionally, Parliamentary Commissioner Sherlyn Hall decided not to release polling division results as they came in, instead opting to wait for all the votes from an entire constituency before issuing them.
Yesterday Dr. Nottage said the integrity of the process should not be called into question.
However, he said he disagreed with Mr. Hall’s decision to withhold results until results from all divisions in particular constituencies were received.
“What I do know is this,” he said, “the parliamentary commissioner informed me that what he had decided to do is wait until all the results came in for a constituency and then release those results. Now, that was not a process with which I agreed and I told him so. He thought it was very efficient to do it that way.”
Noting the rarity of referendums, Dr. Nottage did not suggest that Mr. Hall or any other official in his department should suffer some consequence for the way the matters were handled.
“A referendum is different from (an election where you have) two candidates so you can just count the votes for one or another candidate,” he said. “In this case there were four questions that you have to count ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for them so that takes you four times as long.”
As for the results of the referendum, Dr. Nottage said he was not disappointed.
“I believe we should have equality of persons in the country,” he said. “To that extent I notice that the people for whom this was intended did not support that view. I accept it. I would have no disappointment one way or the other. I just know what I did.”
Asked what steps will be taken to ensure announcements of results during the next general election don’t mirror what took place this time, Dr. Nottage said: “All we have to do is follow the rules as they exist. That’s all we have to do.”
On Tuesday night amid chaotic scenes, the department was blaming electrical failures, technical issues and procedural breaches for its inability to report totals for polling stations throughout the country.
“Basically, our fax (machines) are down because the (media) had to do some gymnastics with cabling, so whatever mechanism that I think you all did, (polling stations) had a difficulty communicating by fax to us. So most of the results were telephoned, by cell, etc,” Mr. Hall said on Tuesday.
According to Mr. Hall, a power outage limited reports from the Montagu constituency. Additionally, issues with the department’s fax machines limited the reporting of results in “a number of other” constituencies.
By Rashad Rolle, Tribune Staff Reporter
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