Less than one week before Antigua and Barbuda holds its upcoming general elections, a nine-person election observation mission assembled by the Caribbean Community (Caricom) has launched a series of key stakeholder meetings across the twin-island nation, as regional authorities work to evaluate the integrity and fairness of the country’s electoral landscape ahead of voting day.
Invited to the country by sitting Prime Minister Gaston Browne, the full observer delegation touched down in Antigua and Barbuda on Thursday, and has planned a full schedule of consultations with all major actors involved in the electoral process ahead of the April 30 poll.
Over the coming days, the mission will hold closed and open discussions with representatives from both the governing party and the parliamentary opposition, leadership from Antigua and Barbuda’s independent Electoral Commission, the national supervisor of elections, and a broad cross-section of civil society groups. These include youth advocacy organizations, private sector business leaders, national religious bodies, and local independent and commercial media outlets.
In a public statement ahead of the mission’s deployment, Caricom noted that these pre-election engagements are a core component of the delegation’s broader work to assess the pre-poll climate. This evaluation will cover everything from the operational readiness of national electoral systems to the overall tone and conduct of political campaigning across the country.
On polling day itself, observation teams will be spread across all constituencies of Antigua and Barbuda to monitor every stage of the voting process. Observers will track activities from the opening of polling stations in the morning, through the casting of ballots by voters, to the final counting and tabulation of votes at the end of the day. Beyond process monitoring, the delegation will also collect first-hand data to support independent verification of official results, and assess the conduct of both polling officials and political party representatives working at polling sites.
Shortly after voting concludes, the mission is scheduled to release an initial public preliminary statement that outlines its core early findings on how the election was administered. After that, the delegation will prepare a comprehensive, detailed final report to submit to the Caricom Secretary-General for regional review.
The full observer team is scheduled to wrap up its assessment work and depart Antigua and Barbuda on May 3, three days after polling day.
Heading the mission is Maxine McClean, a sitting commissioner with Barbados’ Electoral and Boundaries Commission. The delegation’s deputy leader is Herman St Helen, the chief elections officer of Saint Lucia. The remaining mission members bring decades of combined electoral experience from across the Caribbean: Ambassador Felix Gregoire, chairman of the Public Service Commission in Dominica; Rohan Porter, acting assistant director of elections for field operations with Jamaica’s Electoral Office; Stephanie Bram, a staff member of Suriname’s Electoral Bureau; and Karla Dayton Edwards, a commissioner with Trinidad and Tobago’s Election and Boundaries Commission. The entire observer team is backed by a three-person support team from the Caricom Secretariat based in the region’s headquarters.