No Speaker could prevent me from being in the HOA

Fourth District Representative, Mark Vanterpool, has come out with praise for the soundness and virtue of the BVI‘s electoral laws, which he said are responsible for allowing him back into the House of Assembly (HOA) when attempts were made to relieve him of the post.

“Under the constitution, the 13 of us are in here by the voice and the authority of the people of the Virgin Islands in totality,“ Vanterpool said in the HOA recently.

He said this was because of the way the constitution and the elections were designed.

Vanterpool told the House that he was not there by any whims and fancies.

And in a thinly veiled reference to House Speaker Julian Willock’s failed but protracted bid to prevent him from taking his seat in the parliament, Vanterpool said: “I am here not because I may have wanted to come out sometime ago and some people didn’t want me to come back in.”

Willock filed an injunction to prevent Vanterpool from taking his seat in the HOA when he was re-elected in 2019. But after failing in the lower court level, Willock was persuaded to withdraw the injunction at the appeal court.

“No court couldn’t tell me not to come back in, no Speaker couldn’t tell me not to come back in, no clerk couldn’t tell me not to come back in … The constitution authorised me to be here. The constitution authorised all 13 of us to be here, by the voice and authority of the people,” Vanterpool stated.

Vanterpool said he feels proud, whenever he goes abroad and can tell persons that he’s an elected member of the House of Assembly, and not an appointed member.

He said this attaches much more strength, responsibility, and respect to his post.