Mia Mottley rejects opposition claims over election timing

Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has pushed back against crit­i­cism from De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP) leader Ralph Thorne over the tim­ing of the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, say­ing the process fol­lowed the law and that claims to the con­trary are based on a mis­un­der­stand­ing.

Thorne raised con­cerns at the DLP’s is­land­wide ral­ly on Sat­ur­day, ar­gu­ing that the elec­tion was an­nounced be­fore the Elec­toral and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) com­plet­ed the vot­ers’ list, which he said was not due un­til Jan­u­ary 31. Ac­cord­ing to Thorne, the ear­ly elec­tion call cre­at­ed con­fu­sion and un­der­mined the process.

Re­spond­ing lat­er that evening while on the cam­paign trail in St John, Mot­t­ley re­ject­ed the as­ser­tion and point­ed to the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act to sup­port her po­si­tion. She not­ed that the leg­is­la­tion re­quires the vot­ers’ reg­is­ter to be pub­lished no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 31, not on that ex­act date.

Mot­t­ley said the reg­is­ter of elec­tors was of­fi­cial­ly pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 15, ahead of the elec­tion an­nounce­ment, and there­fore served as the valid reg­is­ter for the 2026 poll. She added that once an elec­tion is called, pre­lim­i­nary lists are al­so is­sued to al­low for cor­rec­tions and up­dates.

The prime min­is­ter al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that the win­dow for ad­just­ments to the vot­ers’ list was rapid­ly clos­ing, with less than 48 hours re­main­ing for in­di­vid­u­als to con­firm their reg­is­tra­tion de­tails or up­date their ad­dress.

Ad­dress­ing claims of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Mot­t­ley said dis­crep­an­cies in the vot­ers’ list are not un­usu­al and have oc­curred in every elec­tion cy­cle for decades. She re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the is­sues were po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed, not­ing that per­sons as­so­ci­at­ed with both ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties had been af­fect­ed.

She again urged el­i­gi­ble vot­ers to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for en­sur­ing their in­for­ma­tion is ac­cu­rate, en­cour­ag­ing them to re­view the list be­fore the dead­line.