Boots’ Recall Petition is Rejected

An attempt by former Port Loyola Area Representative Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez to unseat his successor in that constituency, via recall referendum, has been rejected.  In a letter to Martinez from the Office of the Governor General, he was informed that the accepted number of signatures did not meet the requisite thirty percent of registered electors in Port Loyola.  Of the four thousand, nine hundred and fifty registered voters, only one thousand, three hundred and eighty-nine signatures were approved.  That is the equivalent of a little over twenty-eight percent of the total registered voters.  This afternoon, Martinez spoke with reporters ahead of a press conference on Wednesday.

 

Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez, Former Area Representative

“I received this letter, it is dated the twenty-sixth, but I received this letter [on] the twenty-seventh with the details.  Also too, I got the details of the breakdown that was given to me for the people whose signatures mismatched.  And so, immediately I went to work because, like weh a seh, I maintained and I still maintain, if da fifteen hundred signatures were submitted, the room for error eena dat was just forty-five signatures should be rejected because of the fifteen hundred signatures I procured ninety-seven percent, personally, noh nobody ker wahn paper to you and bring it back to me.  I procured that and the journey was long but not hard , and so, from this date here, this letter was copied to the prime minister and Gilroy Usher.  But yoh sih weh really happen, I understand everything.  Sih, big mouth Mr. Boots neva mek no noise about it, I gaan and get the legal advice from Senior Counsel Barrow and Dickie Bradley as to what is the remedy fi dis.”

 

Reporter

“Do you feel that you have been done an injustice or these people, the petitioners, have been done an injustice?”

 

Anthony ‘Boots’ Martinez

“Do I feel?  I know that they have been done an injustice…  How yoh mean apart from that?  When you sign, you know the last part of this letter from the Chief Elections Officer to the Governor General, remind, under clause two: I also wish to report to you, your Excellency, that it is an offense under section nine of the Elected Representatives Act Revised Edition 2020, for a person to forge a signature on a recall petition or to willingly sign the petition more than once.  Soh yoh rub it eena people face.”