ROSEAU (CMC):
Attorney General Levi Peter is under increasing pressure to resign after he referred to the opposition nominee for the post of president of Dominica as “ a drumstick”.
During last week’s parliamentary vote for the new president to replace Charles Savarin, whose two-five-year term ends on Sunday, Peter told legislators that the opposition should have supported the government’s nominee, Sylvanie Burton.
Levi told legislators that he had hoped that the opposition “would have at least said, we have concerns, but we will support”.
“But no, they chose to put up a drumstick. Mr Speaker, that’s the height of idiocy. As the English would say, this is a situation where there is no possibility here is not a snowball chance in hell that that candidate could be elected in this House,” he added.
Dominica’s first-ever female head of state was elected by a margin of 205, with six government legislators and one opposition member absent.
Burton and the opposition nominee, Anette Sanford, are from the Kaliangoo Territory, where the descendants of the country’s indigenous people, the Caribs, still reside.
Burton has been a senior public servant since 2014 and, when she retired, was the permanent secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, Rural Modernisation, Kaliangoo Upliftment and Constituency Empowerment.