A sharp political dispute has erupted in Dominica over low participation in the national voter confirmation exercise, with opposition United Workers Party (UWP) candidate Daniel Lugay pushing back hard against incendiary claims from Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit.
During a Wednesday press briefing, Skerrit alleged that senior UWP leaders, including Dr. Thomson Fontaine, had repeatedly urged supporters to boycott the voter confirmation process. The Prime Minister argued that this deliberate messaging had conditioned UWP supporters to avoid the exercise, saying undoing that psychological impact would take far longer than the current timeline allows.
Lugay, a former parliamentary representative for Roseau North and current UWP candidate for the constituency, has categorically rejected these accusations as baseless falsehoods. He emphasized that there is no verifiable evidence—whether in public statements, recorded audio, or any other form—showing any UWP leader instructing supporters to skip the confirmation step. On the contrary, Lugay maintained that the UWP has actively encouraged all eligible voters to complete their registration confirmation, pointing to public records that back up this claim.
Instead of blaming opposition rhetoric, Lugay placed full responsibility for low confirmation turnout squarely on the national Electoral Office, arguing that organizing, promoting, and facilitating the exercise is the core legal and operational duty of independent electoral authorities. He singled out challenges in Roseau North, Dominica’s most populous constituency, where he says systemic failures created unnecessary barriers to participation.
Lugay revealed that he formally submitted a request to the Electoral Commission months ago to add new confirmation centres in the high-density neighborhoods of Stock Farm and Pottersville. Currently, the entire large constituency only operates two fixed confirmation sites: one at the local Red Cross office and another in Fond Cole. Lugay noted that the lack of accessible locations disproportionately harms elderly residents and people living with physical disabilities, who often struggle to travel long distances to the existing facilities. “When you have senior citizens and people physically challenged, you got to bring the voter confirmation centers to them,” he explained.
Additional problems have plagued the limited mobile outreach the Electoral Office deployed to Stock Farm, according to Lugay. He said local supporters have reported that technical issues with the mobile unit’s audio equipment made it impossible for many residents to hear critical information about the confirmation process. While electoral officials including Chief Elections Officer Anthea Joseph have noted that the mobile unit was stationed at the local football stadium to serve the area, Lugay argued that this single, underperforming unit is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of the large constituency.
Lugay also drew attention to a seeming contradiction in the Electoral Office’s approach: during a recent by-election, officials added new polling stations at the last minute to accommodate high voter volumes, but rejected his repeated requests to add confirmation centres ahead of the current exercise. “They know how to add new polling stations to deal with large volumes of people at the 11th hour and didn’t inform me of it,” he said, questioning why the same flexibility could not have been applied to the voter confirmation process in Roseau North.
In closing, Lugay reaffirmed that the Electoral Office failed to meet its obligations to residents of Roseau North, and that approving his original request for additional centres would have significantly improved access and boosted confirmation numbers across the constituency.