A CDR Perspective
One week ago in Antigua, the governing party, the Antigua Labour Party, (ALP), and its
leader, Prime Minister Lester Bird, appeared confident that the party would be returned to
power in the General Elections scheduled for the following day. Buoyed by a massive Megacade, (their mm for a truly massive motorcade), that seemed to encircle this beautiful mountainous Eastern Caribbean island, some 280 sq. km in size, and an opinion poll conducted by a Trinidad and Tobago polling company, the Caribbean Development Syndicate, (C1)S), which gave it lOseats outright, and gave the opposition United Progressive Party, (UPP), 4 seats with 3 seats described as marginal, the ALP had every reason to believe that mm Wednesday morning, it would 'rewrite the Guinness Book of Records', as predicted by Bird, by winning its seventh consecutive victory at the polls in a General Election
Antigua and Barbuda lies on the outer edges of the Leeward Islands. It has a population of fewer than 70,000 It is a sort of melting pot for Caribbean peoples of the region, with large numbers of residents form neighbouring countries, especially nearby Dominica, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. Commonwealth citizens, who have lived there for three Consecutive years immediately before the quali1ring date, are able to register and vote. Antiguans who have lived outside the country for less than six months, or who is absent as a result of employment at a Mission, or for educational or health reasons also have the right register and vote, but they must be in the country on Election Day to do so. There is no absentea voting.
Politics in Antigua has been dominated by the ALP for more than fifty years. The Bird family, whose patriarch, Vere Bird Sr., is regarded as the 'Father of the Nation', has ruled the country for thIrty-two of the last thirty seveh years! Bird Sr. first became Chief Minister in 1967, lost one election in 1971, was returned to power in 1976, saw the country through independence and remained Prime Minister until he stepped down in 1994. His son Lester Bird succeeded him at that time. Lester successfully retained power, guiding the Party successfully through the 1999 General Elections.
The main opposition Party in Antigua and Barbuda is the UPP, which, like the ALP was
born out of the Labour movement. When Bird Sr. and the ALP lost the 1971 election after being in power for twenty-eve years, it was a parry known as the Progressive Labour Movement, (PLM), that broke their monopoly Bird Sr. struck back with a vengeance in 1976, winning 11 of the 17 was. In 1989 the ALP won 15 seats, fbrcing the
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disparate opposition parties, the PLM, the Antigua Caribbean Liberation Movement and the United National Democratic Party to merge to form the IJPP led by Mr. Baldwin Spencer for the 1994 General Election. The number of seats won by the ALP was reduced to 11 after the 1994 election with the Barbuda seat being won by a representative of the Barbuda Peoples Movement (BPM) and the UPP won five,
In the 1999 election campaign there was criticism regarding inaccuracies in the electoral register, access of the opposition to the state-owned media, election campaign financing, government largesse, which amounted to bribery of, (or at least 'undue influencing'), the electorate! Despite these criticisms, a Commonwealth Observer Group, invited by the Prime Minister, supported by the Leader of the Opposition to observe the General Elections, in their report expressed the view that "..,the electoral process we observed on polling day had allowed the people of Antigua and Barbuda to freely express their will at the polls, and consider that they had exercised their democratic rights with great responsibility".
Nevertheless, they proposed some profound changes to the electoral system. These included:
1. The establishment of an Independent Electoral Commission with the
mandate to;
a. Create a new Register
b. introducer a system of voter identification cards
c. Arrange the redrawing of constituency boundaries
d. Review Electoral law
e. Be responsible for selection and training of independent and impartial election officials
f, Voter education
2. Creation of a Media Commission within the Electoral Commission to prepare guidelines on fair access by all political parties to the electronic and print media, in consultation with the private and publicly owned media.
3. Campaign Finance Reform should be introduced to mitigate the marked disparities in resources available to candidates. They called for:
a. The development of regulations on the amounts spent at national and
constituency levels
b. A method by which the probity of political donations could be measured
4. The introduction of safeguards to reinforce the secrecy of the ballot, including a redesign of the actual ballot paper
5. That all parties preserve as sacrosanct, the neutrality of senior civil servants
Electoral Reform
The government of Antigua and Barbuda, to its credit took the recommendations seriously and amended the Representation of the People Act in 2001 and again in 2002.
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Independent Electoral Commission
As a result of these amendments, a live member Electoral Commission was established, three members, including the Chairman, nominated by the Prime Minister and two, including the Deputy Chairman, nominated by the Leader of the Opposition. Members are to be persons of integrity and the term of office is seven years. Members can only be removed for inability to exercise the function of the office or for misbehavior and only after a tribunal has ruled on the matter. Parliamentarians, candidates and senior public servants are excluded from membership.
The Commission was given all the powers recommended by the Commonwealth Observer Group, and its independence of any political or governmental influence is enshrined in the legislation. One unfortunate aspect however is that it depends on the government to provide the resources for it to function. This dependency severely hampered its efficiency during the 2004 General election preparations.
Media Rules
The Commission was farther empowered to make rules governing the use of the
media during elections; requiring owners of the electronic and print media to provide equitable time and space in a non-discriminatory manner to enable all parties and candidates to carry their messages in accordance with its guidelines: and to prescribe penalties for non-compliance with the rules.
Voter LD. Cards
A new register was compiled and voter identification cards with a photo of electors
and their thumbprints were introduced for the first time.
Ballot Papers
Ballot papers were computer generated and the printing and distribution of the new
ballot papers were placed under the exclusive oversight of an accounting firm, Price Waterhouse. They secured the ballots and had possession of them until they were distributed to Returning Officers on the night prior to the election. So secure were they that even the Supervisor of elections had not seen them! Neither Returning Officers nor Presiding Officers could see them or count them until the batches were opened on Election Day.
Election Symbols
For the first time, election symbols were introduced on the ballot paper to allow voters to identify the candidates fro whom they wished to vote. The ALP used a heart with a torch, the UPP the sun, and independent candidates symbols included among others, a bell, a star, a clock, various animals, and an hourglass'
Campaign Finance Reform
With respect to campaign finance reform, the amendments required political parties to keep an account book into which they shall record all monetary contributions received as well as the name and address of any person or entity contributing any money or thing whose value exceeds $25,000. Further, no political party may accept any monetary or
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other contribution exceeding $5,000 unless it can identify the source to the Commission
and every party must file a report on contributions to the Commission within six weeks of an election. Parties must have their accounts audited within six months of an election and must give access, to its records and audited accounts, to any officer of the Commission authorized in wiiting, to enable an examination of them.
Failure to comply will attract a fine of $2,000 per day!
The Media
A number of other changes occurred in the country over the five years since the 1999
elections. In 1999 control of the publicly and privately owned electronic media, (ADS -
TV and ZDK and SUN FM radio), was dominated by the ALP, while the opposition
equally controlled the print media, three major newspapers, two of which are owned and
openly supported the opposition while the third was said to be owned by a foreign investor who is a keen government supporter but the paper maintains a 'degree of editorial independence'.
Significant among the changes is the addition of radio stations partial to the opposition. These stations facilitated a relentless and effective anti-government campaign especially through the talk show route, criticizing the government at eve!)' tutu. The opposition newspapers were replete with stories about the government and specifically the Prime Minister, which were termed 'nasty' by observers.
The Campaign
The campaigns of both parties were said to be vigorous with the opposition accusing the incumbents of corruption, nepotism, victimization, malfeasance and arrogance. The Birds were maligned and the 'Bird dynasty' was attacked for holding on to power for too long. The opposition manifesto was entitled 'Agenda for Change'. The government on the other hand ran on its 'record of achievement and progress', its ability to produce jobs, investor confidence, the leadership of Prime Minister Bird, the 'inexperience of the opposition' and its leader and the impossibility of opposition promises and proposals. Its manifesto was entitled, 'Moving Forward... The road map to continued progress'.
The firing by Prime Minister Bird of two ALP ministers, Attorney General Errol Court and Mr Hilroy Humphreys, allegedly for malfeasance, reduced the government's majority to one. Both men ran in the General Election, Cort on the UPP ticket and Humphreys as an independent. This was to come back to haunt Bud as Cort elected to run against him in the recent elections.
Despite the extensive electoral reforms, both political parties had serious concerns regarding the preparations for the General Elections. The Electoral Commission, competently advised and supported by election officials from Jamaica, in an attempt to ensure that all qualified citizens had the opportunity to register, nevertheless got into difficulties because the process used did not give time for persons objecting to names on the register to have their objections considered. There were complaints about media access due in part to the Commission failing to produce media guidelines in time as
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called for under the new amendments to the Act. There were accusations about persons 'being brought in from the outside to vote'; about dual registration of some electors; about nasty and inaccurate stories in the press and on the radio; about excessive spending, 'treating', bribery etc.
One positive aspect of the election is that the parties nominated women for the first time, two by the opposition and one by the governing party, although the latter was selected to oppose the Leader of the Opposition' There were six independent candidates. Apart from Barbuda where they have two separate political parties, the ALP and the UPP were the only parties contesting the election.
Near the end of the campaign, the Prime Minister chastised the youth and the business sector for their apparent lack of support and the opposition accused the P.M. of removing government files from his office in the dead of night. So tense was the situation that opposition supporters held a continuous vigil outside the office of the Prime Minister from midnight on the Saturday before the election until the results of the election were official on Wednesday morning, the day after the election!
(Next week we will review the election results, discuss the impact of the electoral
reforms and discuss the need for electoral reform in the Bahamas and assess bow
such reforms would affect our national elections.)
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