Barbados goes to the polls

Barbadians took to the polls on Wednesday as Prime Minister Mia Mottley and the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) sought to retain power in a snap election called on December 18.

Over 260,000 voters were expected to participate. A total of 138 candidates contested the election from several parties with the BLP, Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and Alliance Party for Progress being the three main contenders.

Mottley voted after noon at Eden Lodge Primary School. DLP president Verla De Peiza voted at 6.50am in Canefield, St Thomas.

Opposition leader, and APP leader Bishop Joseph Atherley voted at Springer Memorial School, Bridgetown, at 8.25am.

After voting, Mottley said, “We’ve been working in a systematic way across the island (and) across the constituencies.

“I’m a little concerned that the Labour Party vote is still slow coming out and therefore I am going to be requesting we redouble our efforts.”

Dubbing the election the most consequential since the country’s independence, Mottley said the will of the voters will be respected.

She warned Barbadians that “failing to vote means you might end up with a situation that you really didn’t want.”

Mottley added, “We have to accept that we are responsible for our own destiny and that is why your vote is so important.

“So what you do today determine what happens for the next five years…how you live, what we do as a country, how people can get jobs, how people don’t get jobs, how people earn (and) how people don’t earn.”

Peiza, the DLP’s candidate for St Lucy, told the media the voting process was smooth for her. But she said she had received reports of issues such as people being unable to find their names on list

Peiza said, “In St Lucy, the turnout in the first hour – I can only report on the first hour, because I left and came here (to vote), but the turnout in the first hour was pretty decent.

“We (at DLP) are quietly confident. We ran a ground campaign, we stuck to our plan, and we do believe it is a winning formula.”

Early on Tuesday, Barbados Sovereign Party (BSP) candidate Philip Catlyn sought an injunction to postpone the polls on the ground that covid19 patients in the country were being denied their constitutional right to vote because they were required to quarantine.

But later that day, High Court judge Cicely Chase ruled that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the matter. Instead, Chase said it should have been taken before an election court.

In the country’s last general election in 2018, Mottley’s BLP made a clean sweep of all 30 parliamentary seats.