To the Editor
The present system for determining when an election will occur, based solely upon the decision of the Chief Minister, must now be considered unworkable. Hubert Hughes took advantage of his power to select the date of the election by waiting until the last minute to decide when the election should occur, maintaining his cherished “secret” to the exclusion of everybody. Finally he selected a date as far in advance as possible.
In the meantime, candidates for office, persons who come to, and go off, the island, and every voter could not easily plan how to conduct their activities. Of course, with the election as late as possible, Hughes and his colleagues in government have continued to receive their salaries and benefits, with some even going on cushy “official” trips off-island during this artificially created down time.
If for no other reasons than recognition of what has transpired, the method of choosing the election date must be changed – and a fixed date established, independent of one man or a group of men, for each election year to come. If this were to occur, there would be no self-serving manipulations and candidates and voters could work around the fixed date.
Another thing which should be addressed relates to the need for absentee ballots, allowing those off-island, at the time of an election, to vote. This is such a simple thing. The individual who has to be off-island on election day – on business or for other reasons – would sign up with the voter official ahead of time, complete and leave his ballot to be held by that official until election day when it is recorded.
Those citizens and voters of Anguilla who reside elsewhere, instead of incurring the cost of losing time from work and the expenses of travel to come here to vote, could write to the voting official – with proof of the right to vote – receive an absentee ballot by mail or email and complete it and return it to the official . We would then not have the frantic rush, as exists now, by some candidates to secure overseas voters by defraying their costs for them to come.
Absentee ballot programs are standard systems in most democratic forms of government. They are simple to set up and should be adopted here on Anguilla. Fixing the date of the elections might be attained through one sentence in a bill adopted by the House of Assembly. Maybe a new government in Anguilla, hopefully, would make these changes.
The Concerned Citizen
