Reverend William Watty questions Anthony Astaphan’s contribution to Electoral Law amendments

​Reverend William Watty questions Anthony Astaphan’s contribution to the DLP Government’s proposed amendments to Dominica’s Electoral Laws. He began his response to Mr. Astaphan’s contribution published in the Sun on 6th June 2017, by endorsing Astaphan’s observation of his ignorance of the law, and added a word of appreciation for his leniency in the criticism.
 
He added, “I would have been much more severe. I am not merely ignorant of the law; I am not at all interested. Period. For if the intent and purpose of the precedents, judgements and definitions Mr Astaphan has so diligently assembled and researched, was to justify and promote the outrage that is about to be visited upon our country, with the amending of the House of Assembly (Elections) Act, then I am more than happy to leave that obsession, and the skills it requires, to the likes of him, and rest content in my ignorance and indifference”.
 
On the other hand, I promise that, whenever he finds it possible, not merely to resurrect all those precedents and definitions but, from the vantage-point of the distortions and contradictions that confront and threaten to destabilize our fragile democracy, also to interrogate them as eagerly as he is ever ready to invoke them, then I will try to stir up some interest and even take him a little more seriously.
 
Until then, I must continue to dismiss him as I should any charlatan, and for this reason, viz. that he who is yet to confess the biases that so drive him to belch castigations at every unpalatable observation regarding the Government’s performance, now has the Aramaean gall to paint me partisan, and that naked, the better to prop his tottering credibility”.
 
“Therefore, I do have a real problem with his disingenuousness. Having digested my argument that, in the context of an Election, it is not the intention/motivation, which is neither apparent nor reliable, that can determine the bribe but, much better, the making of an offer of transportation that was not first requested, he preferred to detach my consideration of motivation/intention from its comparison with the superior validity of the unrequested offer, in order to dismiss the detached reference as ‘forensic nonsense’. If that is ‘law’, then may he prosper in his proficiency. I prefer to languish in my ignorance”. …