THIS MORNING, Shirley Lewis will first invite the Senators into the upper chamber; prayers will then be said.
The Senators will then select a President who will be sworn in by her. She will then leave the rest of the proceedings to the President of the Senate.
Once the Senators have departed, the Clerk to the Houses of Parliament then invites the 60 MPs to take their seats. Once seated, the Speaker of the House is selected; the Speaker will then be sworn in by Mrs. Lewis, who will then leave the rest of the swearing-in to be officiated by the Speaker.
It is expected that Syringa Marshall-Burnett will be returned as President of the Senate, while Michael Peart will assume duties as the new Speaker of the House of Representatives. The previous Speaker of the House was Violet Nielson.
The Constituted Authority said its investigations were carried out in respect of the irregularities complained of within the respective constituencies. Statements were taken from various witnesses, including electoral officers, police officers, agents of the candidates and disinterested parties.
While most of the allegations were substantiated, several others were not materially related to section 37 (e) of the Election Petitions Act. The Authority stressed that "of those allegations that were substantiated, none rose to the level that would warrant an application to the Election Court".
The Constituted Authority was asked to intervene following the magisterial recounts in several constituencies. At the end of that process, the original seat count of 35 for the PNP and 25 for the JLP after the preliminary count, was altered. This, as Arnold Bertram, former Local Government Minister, lost his St. Ann North Western seat to the JLP's Verna Parchment, after being declared the winner in the preliminary count.
