The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) has re­fut­ed claims of “po­lit­i­cal sab­o­tage” made by All Peo­ple’s Par­ty (APP) leader Kezel Jack­son.

Jack­son raised the is­sue dur­ing a Face­book livestream on Sat­ur­day, al­leg­ing that sev­er­al of her prospec­tive can­di­dates were un­able to file their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers be­cause the EBC failed to pro­vide the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion. She specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ed that Sher­wyn Lazarus, her can­di­date for Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca, was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sub­mit his pa­pers at Mau­si­ca Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, de­spite ar­riv­ing around 10 am on Fri­day. Jack­son claimed Lazarus was mis­in­formed about the ab­sence of a nom­i­na­tion ex­er­cise and the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer at the lo­ca­tion told him he could not be ac­com­mo­dat­ed af­ter re­turn­ing just af­ter 3 pm.

Jack­son ex­plained that, al­though the par­ty did not take part in the EBC’s mock ex­er­cise on March 25, her chair­man had been li­ais­ing with the EBC ahead of nom­i­na­tion day. She added that while the par­ty had re­ceived forms 38, 39, and 40, they ac­tu­al­ly re­quired form 37 in­stead of 38.

Jack­son al­so claimed that eight of her can­di­dates were suc­cess­ful, but the EBC ini­tial­ly an­nounced on­ly sev­en, lat­er up­dat­ing the fig­ure to 161 af­ter in­clud­ing the APP’s can­di­date.

“Hon­est­ly, EBC needs a new sys­tem be­cause the sys­tem right now is ar­cha­ic. They need to re­vis­it those doc­u­ments and those forms. I am urg­ing the EBC to go through a drill be­fore call­ing an elec­tion to as­sess the ease of ap­pli­ca­tion and if these forms are ap­plic­a­ble,” she said.

“In terms of our democ­ra­cy, we must pro­tect it. We of the All Peo­ple’s Par­ty feel as though it was a po­lit­i­cal sab­o­tage,” she added, urg­ing cit­i­zens to sup­port their ef­forts in seek­ing jus­tice.

Ap­peal­ing for some re­course, Jack­son had a mes­sage to EBC Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis: “Do what is right, based on the prin­ci­ples on which our democ­ra­cy is built,” she said.

In re­sponse, the EBC CEO con­demned the APP’s fail­ure to take part in the pre-nom­i­na­tion mock ex­er­cise and their tar­di­ness in sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, call­ing it “un­for­tu­nate.”

She em­pha­sised that nom­i­na­tion pro­ceed­ings closed at 3 pm, as re­quired by the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple’s Act, and not­ed that the APP had not ad­hered to nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures.

“By Ms Jack­son’s own ad­mis­sion, nei­ther she nor any of her prospec­tive can­di­dates sought an in-per­son in­ter­view or dis­cus­sion with the rel­e­vant Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers re­gard­ing the sub­mis­sion of their nom­i­na­tion pa­pers,” she said.

“The pre­lim­i­nary ex­am­i­na­tion of nom­i­na­tion pa­pers by Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers, or ‘dry run’, was wide­ly ad­ver­tised and sched­uled for Tues­day, March 25, 2025, for this very pur­pose. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers kept their of­fices open dur­ing the hol­i­day week­end and in the days lead­ing up to Nom­i­na­tion Day to as­sist prospec­tive can­di­dates with any con­cerns or ques­tions re­gard­ing the process,” she added.

“It is un­for­tu­nate that this po­lit­i­cal par­ty was un­able to avail it­self of these op­por­tu­ni­ties. Re­gard­ing their can­di­date who could not file his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers at Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca, he en­tered the of­fice at 3:12 pm. Nom­i­na­tion pro­ceed­ings closed at 3 pm, as stip­u­lat­ed by law.”

Po­lit­i­cal Sci­en­tist Dr Maukesh Bas­deo said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rest­ed with the par­ty to fol­low the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

“I think the EBC pro­vid­ed a re­li­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for all po­lit­i­cal par­ties to sub­mit their pa­pers for vet­ting be­fore the ac­tu­al nom­i­na­tion date. It was vol­un­tary, not manda­to­ry. If par­ties had en­coun­tered any prob­lems, they could have re­solved them a week be­fore,” he said.

He added that it was up to the EBC to de­cide whether to of­fer any re­dress, as they were not at fault.