“The ini­tial as­sess­ment of Elec­tion Day ac­tiv­i­ties by the CEOM is that the vot­ers were able to cast their bal­lots with­out in­tim­i­da­tion or fear, and that the re­sults of the 26 Ju­ly 2021 Gen­er­al Elec­tions re­flect the will of the peo­ple of Saint Lu­cia…”

The as­sess­ment of the 10-mem­ber CARI­COM Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion (CEOM) to Saint Lu­cia, who ob­served that coun­try’s Gen­er­al Elec­tions on Mon­day 26 Ju­ly 2021, and ad­vance polls on Fri­day 23 Ju­ly 2021, and com­mend­ed Saint Lu­cians for “the lev­el of ma­tu­ri­ty dis­played in the peace­ful ex­e­cu­tion of the elec­tion’s day ac­tiv­i­ties”.

In the Pre­lim­i­nary State­ment is­sued by CEOM, the Chief of Mis­sion re­ports the fol­low­ing:

1.  CEOM vis­it­ed a ma­jor­i­ty of the polling sta­tions across the 17 con­stituen­cies and mon­i­tored the polling ac­tiv­i­ties, which in­clud­ed the open­ing of the poll, the vot­ing process, the clos­ing of the poll and the pre­lim­i­nary count of bal­lots.  Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the Chief of Mis­sion vis­it­ed Saint Lu­cia’s Par­lia­ment, where Elec­tion Com­mis­sion of­fi­cials were re­ceiv­ing the elec­tion re­sults elec­tron­i­cal­ly.

2.  The polls were opened in a time­ly man­ner in the ma­jor­i­ty of the polling dis­tricts.  All the sta­tions ob­served were ful­ly staffed and most had at least four Polling Agents present, rep­re­sent­ing the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties that con­test­ed the gen­er­al elec­tion.

3.  Most polling sta­tions were con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed and eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble to the vot­ers, though some in­stances of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty chal­lenges for the dis­abled, el­der­ly and in­firmed were not­ed.  The Mis­sion ob­served that there was an ad­e­quate sup­ply of the re­quired vot­ing ma­te­r­i­al which ar­rived prompt­ly to fa­cil­i­tate the open­ing of the polls. 

4.  Ad­e­quate po­lice se­cu­ri­ty was in place at all lo­ca­tions vis­it­ed, with of­fi­cials con­duct­ing their du­ties in a pro­fes­sion­al and ef­fi­cient man­ner. This con­tributed to the lev­el of calm which ac­com­pa­nied the day’s ac­tiv­i­ties. How­ev­er, a high­er lev­el of po­lice par­tic­i­pa­tion could have been en­gaged in main­tain­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing amongst elec­tors in the queues. 

5.  The poll work­ers were fo­cused as they steadi­ly car­ried out the re­quired pro­ce­dures, there­by en­sur­ing that all el­i­gi­ble elec­tors who turned out to vote were able to do so. Their ef­forts to ad­here to the COVID-19 pro­to­cols and sani­tise the polling sta­tions af­ter each elec­tor vot­ed is al­so com­mend­able.

The CEOM had been in­vit­ed to ob­serve the Saint Lu­cia poll by Allen M. Chas­tanet, Prime Min­is­ter of Saint Lu­cia.

The 10-mem­ber Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion com­prised na­tion­als of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Suri­name and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The team was led by Ms. Fern Nar­cis-Scope, Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, who is ex­pect­ed to sub­mit soon a full In­de­pen­dent Re­port for sub­mis­sion to CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al His Ex­cel­len­cy Ir­win LaRocque.