A WEEK from today the electorate of St Vincent and the Grenadines is scheduled to vote at a national referendum to either endorse or reject a new post-independence constitution with very significant changes.

But in a dramatic development last week a four-member ’No Vote Committee’’ linked to the parliamentary opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) moved to the high court to prevent the government of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves from going ahead with the referendum next Wednesday claiming that its funding process violates the letter and spirit of the country’s existing constitution.

No financial allocation has been made available to the parliamentary opposition and the core argument of the NDP-influenced ’No Vote Committee’’ is that it was ’undemocratic and immoral’’ for state funds for the ’Yes’’ vote campaign to be restricted solely to the governing Unity Labour Party (ULP) government of Prime Minister Gonsalves.

The government’s response has been that the new constitution was approved by a two-thirds majority after widespread national consultations for constitutional reform in which the opposition NDP was involved, and that no request was made for funding the ’no vote’’ campaign.

As argued by Prime Minister Gonsalves, funding for the educational campaign on constitutional reform was borne by the state with help from the Organisation of American States, and the opposition was part of the process.

’Now that the required two-thirds parliamentary majority approval of the proposed new constitution was obtained, I find it strange for the government to allocate state funds for the NDP to oppose what the decision of the National Assembly,’’ he said.

When told about the moral argument contention of the government’s opponents for sharing state funds for the referendum campaign, Gonsalves said the NDP had ’fallen under foreign influence to create confusion’’ and was now panicking because of the nature of its campaign that ’engages in superficialities rather than one of substance’’.

In any case, said Gonsalves, now that an injunction has been filed it was a matter for the court to ’independently exercise judgement. For its part, the government is going ahead with arrangements to secure a referendum verdict from the electorate on the constitution as approved by a two-thirds vote in the National Assembly’’.

As this column was being written yesterday, no official confirmation could be obtained on the fixing of a date for one of the country’s three judges to hear the case to block the referendum.

When it was originally filed, a judge in chambers had pointed to the necessity for it to be served on the country’s Attorney General but this had not been done up to the time of the writing of this column.

Legal luminaries contend that while it may not be a compelling factor in law for a judge to fix a date ahead of the referendum, as is desirable, there remains ’a strong argument in favour of moral necessity’’ for this to be done.

Although already approved with a two-thirds majority of the governing Unity Labour Party on September 3 in the 15-member House of Assembly, a two-thirds vote at a national referendum is also required for parliament to endorse the country’s new constitution.

Campaigning has been intense since parliamentary approval with Gonsalves’ ULP demonstrating much optimism to defeat a ’no vote’’ campaign by the opposition NDP of Arnhim Eustace.

At the last general election of December 2005, the ULP secured 55.26 per cent of the votes and 12 of the 15 seats compared with the NDP’s 44.68 per cent vote and three seats.