Three CARICOM countries plan to hold general elections in 2018

go through Time Domain Network Wireline staff

February 14, 2018 at 10:30 AM

Prime Ministers Mitchell, Brown and Stewart

St. George’s, Grenada (TDN)
– CARICOM member states Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and Grenada are scheduled to hold general elections in 2018. While only the date for Grenada has been confirmed, the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and Barbados are expected to announce dates soon to coincide with the first half of 2018. In Grenada, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, who has a 15-0 majority in the country’s parliament, has set March 13 as election day. At the same time, the man who has served as prime minister for more than 18 years (although not continuously) announced that if elected, this would be his last term. Mitchell has recently been criticized for his handling of the country’s citizenship by investment program, but political observers expect his ruling party to be re-elected in the elections. In Barbados, the fate of Frendell Stewart, who has served as prime minister since 2010, and his Democratic Labour Party is somewhat uncertain as he only has a two-seat majority in the 30-member parliament. Adding to his woes is the country’s deteriorating economic situation, and his opponents have also seized on the opportunity.Recently, the government has imposed a series of new taxes on the population in an attempt to make up for a sharp drop in tourism revenue, which is the country’s main economic driver. With the central bank’s reserves dwindling, the use of foreign exchange has also been restricted. As the economic situation worsens, crime rates are also rising. It is widely expected that the election date will be announced in the coming weeks and the election will be held before June 2018. Meanwhile, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said that the exact date of the election will be announced in a short time, and the constitution stipulates that the election should be held in mid-March. Browne said the election “comes like a thief in the night”. In the 2013 election, Browne’s Antigua Labour Party defeated Baldwin Spencer’s United Progressive Party, which had been in power for a decade. He hopes to retain his party’s 14-7 majority in parliament. While the elections in the three CARICOM countries may not focus too much on the free and fair electoral process, the Dominican Constitution stipulates that the election will be held in 2019, which is expected to attract worldwide attention. Since coming to power in 2000, the Dominican Labour Party government of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has been accused by the opposition United Workers Party of serious electoral violations, including voter bribery and the large-scale importation of voters from overseas, some of them illegally, to vote in marginal constituencies. With the election less than two years away, all calls to clean up the bloated electoral rolls, which have more registered voters than the country’s population, have so far been ignored. CARICOM countries, including Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, faced with similarly bloated electoral rolls, have decided to clean up their rolls through voter re-registration.

It will be interesting to see whether the Caribbean Community, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Commonwealth bloc will continue to remain silent in the face of Skerrit’s continued abuse of the Dominican electoral process.