Orrette Fisher | Elections in Dominica amidst calls for reform

General elections were held in our sister Caribbean island of Dominica on December 6, 2019. At the end of polling, the governing Dominican Labour Party (DLP) had won 18 of the 21 seats being contested, increasing the number of seats held from 15 to 18. This meant that the opposition United Workers Party (UWP), had lost three of the six seats held.

This signalled an unprecedented fifth term in office for Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who, in 2004 at the age of 31, became the youngest ever prime minister in the region.

Leading up to the elections, there was a very tense atmosphere in the country as the opposition UWP insisted that the elections should not be held unless there was some level of electoral reform. There were demonstrations and protests, which saw roadblocks being set up in certain areas of the country. The police used tear gas to break up some of the demonstrations and arrested several citizens.

ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Dominica, like several other commonwealth countries, has modelled its electoral system, for the most part, on the Westminster model, with a head of state, elected representatives to the House of Assembly, and senators appointed by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition – a legacy of British and French colonisation.

Elector registration is done on a continuous through a system similar to the one implemented in Jamaica in the 1990s. The population of the island is estimated at approximately 74,000 inhabitants, and the list of voters is currently in the same region.

As Dominica is a small and very mountainous island state, most people reside in villages and know each other. As a result, Dominicans have always voted without the use of identification cards (ID). At the polls, they simply give the presiding officer their name, and once it appears on the list, a ballot is issued, and they are allowed to vote. Over the years, doubts have crept in as to whether or not persons have sought to exploit this to their advantage by voting in the name of others.

International observation missions to previous elections in Dominica have made several recommendations to improve and modernise the electoral system. These included the introduction of campaign-finance legislation, the review of constituency boundaries, the issuing of identification cards to electors for voting, and the cleansing or updating of the voters list, among other things.

Efforts at reform were hampered for several reasons, including the recent devastation of the island by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The opposition maintained that at a minimum, the voters list should be updated and voter identification cards issued before the next election was called. Differences in opinion between government and opposition as to what was to be done and how it could be achieved resulted in the draft legislation to facilitate the changes not making it through Parliament.

During the ensuing arguments and protest actions, the prime minister decided to exercise his constitutional right to call an election at any time, although constitutionally, it could have been held as late as May of 2020. This did not sit well with the opposition, which, despite its protest actions, nominated a full slate of 21 candidates.

THE VOTERS LIST

The problem of a seemingly bloated voters list is not unique to Dominica. In fact, Jamaica is grappling with a similar problem, which has seen the Electoral Office undertake a dead-elector-removal exercise in recent months.

In Dominica, as is the case in Jamaica, citizens have no unique identifying number, and with no system in place to continuously and accurately remove the names of electors who have died, there are reports of names of voters who died decades ago still being on the list.

Dominica, however, is grappling with another problem in this regard. Dominican citizens who reside overseas and whose names appear on the list are eligible to vote in elections. The only other requirement for such citizens to vote is that they must not be away from the island for more than five consecutive years.

It is being argued that there are a significant number of Dominicans living outside the country whose names remain on the list but who are no longer eligible by virtue of having been away for more than the stipulated five years. Again, there appears to be no system in place to monitor and remove the names of citizens residing abroad who have become ineligible. The concern is that Dominicans reportedly return home to vote in large numbers, and in so doing, some are able to vote despite no longer being eligible to do so.

Once again, by way of comparison, Jamaicans who no longer reside in Jamaica, under the Jamaican statute, are not eligible to remain on the list. Under the system of continuous registration, however, there is no mechanism in place to identify such electors and for their names to be removed. As a result, such persons are able to return and vote in elections once their names appear on the voters list.

THE ELECTIONS

So despite allegations that large numbers of Dominicans returned home to vote, their eligibility could not be questioned if their names appeared on the voters list. Without the issuing of voter identification cards, there was no requirement for Dominicans to present any form of identification at polling stations in order to vote. Against this background, elections were held as scheduled on December 6 in an atmosphere of calm and tranquility, with no reports of post-election violence.

Of interest is the reported voter turnout of 52.7 per cent, which, conceivably, would have been higher had ineligible voters been removed from the list. This again mirrors the situation existing in Jamaica.

The prime minister, in his victory speech, indicated that he would appoint a commission headed by a yet-to-be named prominent Caribbean jurist to lead the reform agenda. Commissions sometimes work very slowly, and so the people of Dominica wait to see where the reform agenda goes from here.

- Orrette Fisher is an election management consultant and former director of elections. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.