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Supreme Court Allows Judicial Review of Recall
posted (April 10, 2014)
And while they wait for things to progress on the criminal side against Penner, they're also pressing forward on the civil side to get him ejected as Area Representative of Cayo Northeast.

Today, Justice Courtney Abel heard the application from Orlando Habet and 5 other residents of Cayo Northeast to challenge the decision of Chief Elections Office, Josephine Tamai, to reject 337 signatures, which meant that the threshold to trigger a recall referendum against Penner wasn't met.

After hearing from Acting Solicitor General Nigel Hawke and Attorney Lisa Shoman, he granted leave to bring judicial review proceedings. Outside of court, Shoman explained what their hopes are for a favourable outcome in the case:

Lisa Shoman, attorney
"The chief elections officer depending on what the court decides - we are fighting for the 79 people who signed twice; 72 who signed twice and 4 more who signed three times. The chief elections officer disallowed all of those people because of the double signature. We are saying the law doesn't say that is a penalty at all. So if we get those 79 and we get the 52 whose signatures whose signatures didn't match the binders and we get some of the 52 who they say were not registered, we will cross the threshold and there will be a recall a recall referendum. Now winning that referendum is another matter, but we are confident that we will be able to get the reliefs needed to be able to cross the threshold that the Governor General will have to trigger a recall referendum on Elvin Penner remaining as area representative and I think with the present climate my client is very confident that we will cross that 60% threshold."

The full judicial review case will be heard on July 2, 3, and 4.

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