DOMINICA-Government hoping to have electoral reform measures adopted by the first quarter of 2024

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who in August said he has no intention of “dragging the electoral reform matter up until the next general election,” says he intends to have the matter go before the public in January next year.

“I believe by January, we will be in a position to present to the country the specific elements that we will go within the first phase to advance electoral reform, and thereafter, we will go to Parliament to have the laws enacted and give the Electoral Commission the authority to proceed,” Skerrit said.

During the last national budget debate in August, Skerrit told legislators, “I will say to the country again that I want electoral reform, and let us try to get it before the end of the year. Let us go to Parliament.

“But all I will say to those in the country, Mr. Speaker, is that I have no intention of dragging this electoral reform agenda until the next elections. It is going to happen in Dominica. We will come to the Parliament and pass the legislation that we have consensus on in this country, and this foolishness men are playing, dragging this thing has to come to the top,” Skerrit said then.

The sole Commissioner on Electoral Reform, Sir Dennis Byron, the former president of the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), had been appointed as the sole commissioner advancing the efforts towards electoral reform, a significant issue in Dominica with the opposition parties, the United Workers Party (UWP) and the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP) boycotting last December’s general election.

In June, he wrote to Prime Minister Skerrit and the UWP president Lennox Linton, indicating that he had “completed my review of the electoral legislation, systems and processes in the Commonwealth of Dominica.

“This completes my assignment on the improvement of the electoral process in Dominica,” Dennis wrote in his June 12 letter.

Since the report was handed over, the government has held a series of public discussions on the document, and Prime Minister Skerrit said his administration is committed to electoral reform.

“And so in the first quarter of 2024, you will see an advancement in this,” he added.