Opposition Leader Lennox Linton takes issue with PM Skerrit labelling protestors as ‘mob-like rioters’

​Opposition Leader Lennox Linton takes issue with PM Skerrit labelling protestors against amendments to Dominica’s electoral laws as ‘mob-like rioters’. He also accused the Prime Minister of attempting to turn free expression in a democracy into an offence.
 
Linton told a press conference last week, “Regrettably citizens of the Commonwealth of Dominica peacefully protesting to secure their right to elections, with integrity as a backbone of our democracy, are being categorized by the Prime Minister as ‘mob-like rioters, acting at the behest of their leaders, and whose street protest, lawlessness and violence, are intended to black eye Dominica in the regional and international world, with un-Dominican behaviour”.
 
In an address to the nation last Thursday, Skerrit said a dangerous precedent was being set in Dominica, whereby expression of views by some, is almost always accompanied by street protests, lawlessness and violence. He described this as “un-Dominican”, and appeared to lay the blame at the feet of the opposition United Workers Party.
 
However, Linton said “All around the world, in America, England, Canada, Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, China, St Lucia, Antigua, St Kitts & Nevis, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago, citizens stand for their rights and take to the streets in protest, against unacceptable government action. In Dominica, Skerrit is shamefully playing victim in his never ending thirst for public sympathy. He is hell bent on turning this basic form of free expression in democratic society, into an offence, under false claims that it is foreign to our political & cultural landscape, and all of this is being done to malign members of the opposition”.