CAYMAN ISLANDS-POLITICS-Husband of defeated candidate appeals court ruling

GEORGETOWN, Cayman Islands, CMC – The Court of Appeal is being asked to overturn a ruling by Chief Justice Anthony Smellie that Education and Employment Minister Tara Rivers can keep her West Bay seat in the Parliament after the husband of an election rival had filed a petition challenging her nomination. Lawyers for John Gordon Hewitt have filed an 11-page petition citing nine “grave and serious errors” committed by Justice Smellie “rendering the determination arrived at by him a nullity and not a determination within the meaning and intent of Section 66 of the Constitution of the Cayman Islands”. Hewitt had earlier gone to court asking that Rivers be removed as the second elected member of West Bay on the grounds that she is the holder of a United States passport and has not lived in the Cayman Islands for seven consecutive years before the election held on May 22. Rivers was appointed a government minister six days later.