KINGSTOWN – The leader of the rul­ing Uni­ty Labour Par­ty (ULP) Dr Ralph Gon­salves was sworn as Prime Min­is­ter of this Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­try yes­ter­day even though Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers staged demon­stra­tions claim­ing that Wednes­day's gen­er­al elec­tion had been rigged in his favour.

Gon­salves, who won an un­prece­dent­ed fourth con­sec­u­tive term in of­fice, was sworn in, even though the leader of the main Op­po­si­tion New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP), Arn­him Eu­stace, told re­porters he had asked the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al not to swear in the 69-year-old Gon­salves.

Eu­stace, 70, told re­porters that the NDP, which, ac­cord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary re­sults won sev­en of the 15 seats in Wednes­day's gen­er­al elec­tion, "would nev­er ac­cept the re­sults of the elec­tion."

Eu­stace, who is head­ing the par­ty sup­port­ers in the Cen­tral Lee­ward con­stituen­cy where calls for a re­count of the bal­lots case is tak­ing place, said his can­di­date Ben­jamin Ex­eter had won the poll even though the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults gave for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Sir Louis Strak­er vic­to­ry.

The NDP sup­port­ers, clad in their yel­low jer­seys, claimed that sev­er­al bal­lot box­es were miss­ing and were de­mand­ing that ei­ther the Elec­toral Of­fice do over the poll in that con­stituen­cy or an­nounce that Ex­eter had won the elec­tion.

At one stage, there was a close con­fronta­tion be­tween Sir Louis and Eu­stace with the po­lice hav­ing to in­ter­vene to keep the two vet­er­an politi­cians apart.

Sir Louis had crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion of Eu­stace to bring sup­port­ers to the po­lice sta­tion where the re-count­ing is tak­ing place but Eu­stace in­sist­ed that he was right since the rul­ing par­ty had con­spired to cheat the pop­u­la­tion of its vic­to­ry.

The re­count is still in progress.

– Ja­maica Glean­er