Both the US State De­part­ment and the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment have is­sued trav­el ad­vi­sories against the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca.

This, in the wake of some un­rest in the CARI­COM coun­try, in the run-up to gen­er­al elec­tions on Fri­day De­cem­ber 6th.

Vet­er­an Caribbean jour­nal­ist Pe­ter Richards told us the un­rest is not as se­vere as is be­ing made out in so­cial me­dia.

He re­ports that it has tak­en the form of block­ing roads and burn­ing de­bris, and much of it is lim­it­ed to two key ar­eas—the Marig­ot and Sal­is­bury con­stituen­cies—which are strong­holds of the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Work­ers Par­ty (UWP).

“Once you pass Marig­ot and you pass Sal­is­bury, you will not re­alise that Do­mini­ca has any form of vi­o­lence, as they’ve been show­ing you on so­cial me­dia,” the vet­er­an jour­nal­ist ex­plains. “Look at the pic­tures of the ar­eas they keep show­ing, of where the vi­o­lence is tak­ing place. It’s on­ly in Marig­ot and Sal­is­bury,” he points out. “No oth­er part of Do­mini­ca are they show­ing you acts of vi­o­lence or in­tim­i­da­tion, or what have you.”

Calls for elec­tion re­form be­hind Do­mini­ca un­rest

The pro­test­ers, main­ly UWP sup­port­ers, are de­mand­ing elec­toral re­forms ahead of the polls. They want to en­sure the sanc­ti­ty of the Vot­ers' Lists.

Pe­ter Richards ex­plains that un­der the Do­mini­ca sys­tem, once one’s name is on the Vot­ers’ List, one can vote, and do so with­out pic­ture iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. He says one of the is­sues be­ing raised by the op­po­si­tion is the fact that Do­mini­cans who live abroad of­ten re­turn home to vote, and then go back to their oth­er coun­try. The op­po­si­tion wants this to stop.

An­oth­er bone of con­tention con­cerns the reg­is­ter­ing of deaths of vot­ers.

“If your fam­i­ly do not bring the doc­u­ments to show that you have died, your name can­not be re­moved from the List. That’s the law.”

“If you live out of Do­mini­ca for more than five years, there al­so is a pro­vi­sion in law that you could be re­moved from the List, but it re­quires fill­ing out a spe­cial form,” he says. “If you fail to fill out that form, there is no way they can take you off the List.”

This week, the courts threw out an at­tempt by the UWP to have the elec­tions de­layed un­til Feb­ru­ary 5th next year. The rea­son be­hind the rul­ing is that the Do­mini­can Con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low for any­one but the Prime Min­is­ter to set the elec­tion date, which is what the op­po­si­tion at­tempt­ed to do, the court not­ed.

Pe­ter Richards says notwith­stand­ing the pock­ets of op­po­si­tion un­rest, Do­mini­ca’s Elec­toral Com­mis­sion as­sures that every­thing is in place for a smooth elec­toral process on Fri­day De­cem­ber 6th.

Just over 72,000 Do­mini­cans will be cast­ing their bal­lots be­tween 7am and 5pm.

The op­po­si­tion UWP is con­test­ing all 21 seats.