Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
( L - R ) SHAW and MILLER
THE ELECTORAL Advisory Committee (EAC) is challenging Shadow Minister of Finance, Audley Shaw, to provide evidence that its residence reverification exercise was a scam.
In a statement, chairman of the EAC, Professor Errol Miller, said if Mr. Shaw could not provide evidence he should withdraw his statements publicly.
While speaking at the the JLP's Area Council Three meeting recently, Mr. Shaw alleged that the Electoral Office of Jamaica's (EOJ) reverification process, including the Bill Johnson and Mark Wignall polls, were scams developed to keep the governing People's National Party (PNP) in power.
However, Professor Miller pointed out that the residence reverification process, which was intended to carry forward some 200,000 people who could not be found by the EOJ to the June 2006 voters' list, was agreed to by both major political parties at the EAC's retreat in 2003. As such Mr. Shaw's allegations were unfounded, he said.
"We take it that as a long-standing member of Parliament and a senior officer of the JLP, you would not make a statement charging the EOJ with being involved in a scam to keep the present government in power without having evidence of such involvement," Professor Miller said in his statement.
"The EAC is therefore asking you (Mr. Shaw) to produce forthwith the evidence of such a scam so that the matter can be thoroughly investigated. If by any chance in the exuberance of the moment you misspoke, we are asking you to immediately withdraw such charges publicly," he added.
Mr. Shaw, who was off the island, declined to say what evidence he had to support his allegations or respond to the statement made by the EAC yesterday. He said he would not respond until he saw the statement himself.
But party general secretary, Karl Samuda, who is also the JLP's representative to the EAC, said while he is yet to discuss the issue with Mr. Shaw, there was currently no evidence to suggest the reverification process was a scam.
"Mr. Shaw's statement does not at this stage in any case, accord with anything that I have been exposed to so far," he told The Gleaner.
