In late March, the office of the Governor General wrote top Anthony Boots Martinez to tell him that the recall of Port Loyola Area Rep Gilroy Usher he had spearheaded was DOA.
That's because of the 1654 signatures received, 265 were rejected - leaving him 96 short of the threshold to trigger a recall which is 1,485 votes.
The Elections and Boundaries review found that 188 signatures did not match with the elections and boundaries record of registered electors; that 14 were not registered at all and that 41 were not registered in Port Loyola.
That would seem to be the end of that - but not for Martinez. He says the fight has just begun:
Anthony Boots Martinez, Organizing Recall in Port
"That I have confidence in the people that there must have, there has to be some redress, whether I think that the preliminary thing is to write the Chief Elections Officer, appealing to her as the petitioner declared to hereby respectfully demand that my signature, which is lawful and genuinely affixed to the petition, be accepted and counted as part of the petition."
"That is the first step, and then failing that, there must have a timeframe for that and then we go to judicial review if it is necessary, but in everything they have time to correct things. We could say what we want, but the law is the law."
"That's no political directive. The law is the law. So what will we do now? we are a country of lawlessness then? we need to follow the law. I don't know if they believe by kicking the ball down the road, oh city council election gone, nobody will pay this no mind. But these people are interested and you are taking away their constitutional rights of the 1500 signatures. I procured 97% personally. Nobody took a paper to you and bring it back to me. I procured that. The journey was long, but not hard."
Martinez says he is planning what he calls a full press conference for Wednesday.
Email
Print