Parliamentary elections in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) – six of which were held in 2025 — are always followed by recommendations to governments from local and foreign observer teams, most submitted quickly, but hardly ever accepted and implemented with the speed expected by the proponents.
A significant factor – as also experienced in cases of post-Independence Constitutional Review – is that unlike proponents looking way-ahead into the future, governments tend to think and act in accordance with immediate realities.
Politicians also tend to think in five-year terms, always (even though not exclusively) with delivery of election promises and the next general elections in mind.
After every Saint Lucia General Election, recommendations are made for reviewing and increases Constituency Boundaries, monitoring Election Financing – and now, new calls for consideration of Overseas, Online or Proxy Voting.
Constituency Boundaries
Caribbean constituency boundaries, like everywhere else, are akin to the bordering lines drawn between continental nations and states, marked by everything from rivers and roads to straight imaginary lines, in some countries cutting through homes and across streets, dividing houses and families, neighbourhoods and friendships.
Boundaries bequeathed by Britain are rarely redrawn, increased as they became more populous, but mainly to the advantage of the ruling party, or to the disadvantage of another, through ‘Gerrymandering’.
Gerrymandering is historically defined as redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts in such a way as to give one political party undue advantage over others.
(The word is derived from Eldridge Gerry, Governor of the US state of Massachusetts, who did this over two centuries ago in 1812, to preserve control for his party.)
In an interesting Saint Lucia example, just ahead of the 1974 General Elections, the boundaries for Choiseul were redrawn by the then United Workers Party (UWP) government.
In that contraption, Victoria was moved to neighbouring Soufriere and Saltibus was moved south to Laborie – and the sitting UWP MP, J.M.D. Bousquet, lost to the opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) candidate Evans Cauldron.
It was indeed a deadly blow and a costly loss for Bousquet, who didn’t live very long thereafter.
Since independence in 1979, there have been calls by advocates citing demographics to increase the number of Saint Lucia constituencies from 17 to (at least) 21.
Gros Islet MP Kenson Casimir, who won the most votes (of all candidates) in the northern town of Gros Islet (8,175) is calling for the sprawling town to be divided into four separate constituencies (Gros Islet-North, South, East and West).
Several other constituencies have also been identified for revisiting over past decades.
Election Financing
For decades there have also been efforts to get Caribbean governments, political parties and politicians to adopt the supposedly politically-correct but virtually-impossible objective of determining how parties and politicians raise election funds.
But the very nature of partisan politics in ‘First past the post’ Westminster horserace election cycle virtually invites candidates with lesser means to find, invent or otherwise use creative and not-so-hidden ways and means to meet the unfair challenge from millionaire candidates.
Where laws to control election financing have been legislated, parties have simply invented new or resurrected buried legal ways to raise funds – and without having to declare.
Unless vigorously monitored, such laws will only remain printed words
Saint Lucia’ December 1 elections, however, offered an interesting but rare case of two opposition candidates intercepted, questioned, detained and relieved by police officers of extraordinarily-huge loads of cash on their person or within sight and reach, in possible violation of local Election Day laws.
Overseas and Online Voting
Overseas and online voting are not entertained in most CARICOM elections, despite repeated calls by Diaspora-based dual citizens to be favourably facilitated at home with access to representation, but without taxation.
But apart from Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, with populations in single-digit millions, the average number of voters in CARICOM member-states is in the hundreds-of-thousands — and can be manually and transparently counted in the six hours to midnight after the usual close of polls at 6pm.
In Guyana, a vast 616,000 square-kilometre country with only 800,000 voters, ballots tallied in the presence of contesting party representatives in deep interior regions are still transported to the Electoral Commission (in the capital Georgetown) by small aircraft, on horseback, by foot or along long rivers.
Pros and Cons of Incumbency
After Guyana’s September 1, 2025 Presidential and Parliamentary elections, the European Union’s Election Observers Team claimed the ruling PPP/Civic alliance – which handsomely won — had an unfair advantage from its incumbency, which, the group claimed, allowed the government to launch many pre-election projects.
But President Dr Irfaan Ali strongly rejected the claims, pointing out, among other things, that the projects delivered were promised in the PPP/Civic’s 2020 elections campaign manifesto.
Besides, he reminded the authors that ruling parties in Europe are not immune from launching projects promised when elected, ahead of upcoming elections.
Further, the results in SVG defied the EU’s claim, as Prime Minister Dr ralph Gonsalves and the ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) had been in office for five consecutive terms (over 24 years) and its incumbency seems to have had a totally opposite effect.
The CARICOM Observer team delivered its initial report to the local press before leaving and – as per usual – the final report will come later.
But the time has come for steps to be taken for Caribbean governments to start addressing post-election recommendations between elections – during each term and not as a post-election exercise.
It’s time to collate all Saint Lucia’s reports and 2026 will be a good year to start.
But even so, there are many other observations also worth noting, especially mentioned by commentators and analysts following the December I Saint Lucia General Elections, also worth considering.
Primary among them is the growing concerns about external intervention and interference in national elections in ways that can render them unfree and unfair.
These matters will be addressed in Part 2.