Public Relations Officer of the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission (ABEC) Elisa Graham says citizens and residents can be proud of the country’s electoral system.
Ahead of the elections, Graham told Pointe FM that ABEC is impervious to external influences with respect to the way it conducts its business on behalf of the people of Antigua and Barbuda, encouraging news, as the nation heads to the polls to elect a new government in its general elections today.
“Holding an election in any jurisdiction, the process is a tedious one, because you have to be so careful and the electoral commission is an independent body; there is no influence at all when it comes to how we conduct our business,” Graham told Pointe FM’s Talking Your Mind.
“It says so clearly in the law as well. The 1999 Commonwealth Observer Group, they were the ones who called for the establishment of an independent body that conducts the affairs of the elections.”
Graham said the public can trust the electoral system, which has been further strengthened by the presence of five local, regional and international election observer teams who are in Antigua and Barbuda to witness the general elections.
“It is very critical as a democratic country in the Commonwealth – as a democratic country in the world – that we have some level of trust in our system because it is our system and at the end of the day, we have observers,” Graham stated.
“We have the Free and Fair Election League, we have the Antigua and Barbuda Evangelical Alliance, we have the Organization of American States (OAS), we have CARICOM, we have the Commonwealth [observer missions].
“Those are individuals that are currently on the ground observing the processes, observing our system, reading our laws, going on our website, going on our Facebook page, monitoring to see exactly what is happening in the country.
“So, we should be proud of the system that we have, not necessarily that we are perfect, because we are not. We know we have improvements to make, we know there are laws that are probably need to change to allow certain things, however, where the democratic process is concerned, we should have trust in our system.”
