THE Electoral Commission yesterday sought the intervention of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and Opposition Leader Bruce Golding to break the deadlock with Parliament over open-voting penalties, in time for the general election.

The intervention of the political leaders has become extremely pressing, according to political sources, as there is increasing concern that bribery, which the provisions are intended to diminish, could decide the outcome of what is perceived to be a close election.

“This needs to happen before the general election, or you are leaving the door open to what could be possibly the last major area of malpractice that we have to deal with,” Director of Elections Danville Walker said last night.

He said that the situation was “grave” as there were indications that a number of electors were willing to sell their votes, and there were people equally willing and capable of purchasing those votes.

Walker confirmed that a letter giving a chronology of the events leading up to the deadlock is to be sent to both leaders.

Political sources said members of the Electoral Commission were firmly against accepting the Senate’s amendments, which emanated from its April 2006 report to Parliament seeking to introduce measures against open balloting, in light of the convention.

The sources said, too, that the letter to the political leaders will highlight the fact that the penalties included in the three bills, currently before Parliament, were not the recommendations of the Commission. It is understood that the mandatory sentences were actually included by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel, acting on the instructions of the Attorney General’s Department (AG).

Walker refused to comment publicly on the issue, but our political sources told the Observer that the members were peeved that while the mandatory penalties came from the AG’s Department, it was the Attorney General himself, Senator A J Nicholson, who moved the amendments in the Senate, breaching a near 30-year-old convention under which Parliament has traditionally approved electoral proposals without change.

But the director of elections expressed serious concerns about what could happen in the upcoming elections, if the matter was not resolved in time.

He said that the Electoral Advisory Committee, the predecessor to the Electoral Commission, has covered nearly every major election malpractice over the last 10 years, including impersonation of voters, padding of voters’ lists with fictitious names and the stealing of ballot boxes and studding them with illegal votes.

“The one area that remains for us to find a solution to is bribery,” he said.

Walker added that over the last few years, there have been a number of reports from the former leaders of both parties about the use of bribes in elections.

He said that the best deterrent against bribery is to remove the methods by which the person offering the bribe can ensure that: “What they are paying for, they are going to get,” hence the decision to introduce provisions against open-voting.