Anglican Bishop calls for peaceful campaign ahead of next months general election

The An­gli­can Bish­op of Bar­ba­dos, the Right Rev­erend Michael Maxwell, is call­ing on can­di­dates con­test­ing the Feb­ru­ary 11 gen­er­al elec­tion to con­duct their cam­paigns in a man­ner that “ho­n­ours God and re­spects the dig­ni­ty of every cit­i­zen, in­clud­ing those of the op­pos­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties”.

To­day is nom­i­na­tion day for the snap elec­tion that Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley of the rul­ing Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty (BLP) called for the sec­ond oc­ca­sion with­in at least one year re­main­ing on her five-year term in of­fice.

Mot­t­ley led the BLP to land­slide 30-0 vic­to­ries in both the 2018 and 2022 gen­er­al elec­tions, de­feat­ing the main op­po­si­tion De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP). The DLP is led by King Coun­sel, Ralph Thorne, who took over the lead­er­ship of the par­ty in Feb­ru­ary 2024, less than a week af­ter he left the rul­ing BLP gov­ern­ment.

The Ba­jan Free Par­ty (BFP), the Peo­ple’s Coali­tion for Progress (PCP) and the Unit­ed Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (UPP) are ex­pect­ed to nom­i­nate can­di­dates for the elec­tion.

In his let­ter ad­dressed to “par­tic­i­pants” in the elec­tions Bish­op Maxwell said the po­lit­i­cal sea­son in­vites each can­di­date and can­vass­er to re­flect the val­ues that strength­en the coun­try’s democ­ra­cy and build up its com­mu­ni­ties.

“We en­cour­age all in­volved in the elec­toral process to be vir­tu­ous, or­der­ly, trust­wor­thy, eth­i­cal, and sin­cere in their words and ac­tions, as they seek the VOTES of our peo­ple,” he wrote, adding “to be vir­tu­ous is to walk in in­tegri­ty, al­low­ing truth and right­eous­ness to guide every promise that is put for­ward or every po­si­tion tak­en”.

He said scrip­ture urges Bar­ba­di­ans to think on “what­ev­er is true, what­ev­er is no­ble, what­ev­er is right, what­ev­er is pure” and that to be or­der­ly is to con­duct the po­lit­i­cal meet­ings, gath­er­ings and can­vass­ing with re­spect for law, com­mu­ni­ty and peace, re­mem­ber­ing that “every­thing should be done in a fit­ting and or­der­ly way” .

He said to be trust­wor­thy is to speak truth­ful­ly and act ho­n­ourably and that to be eth­i­cal is to stand “for fair­ness and jus­tice, walk­ing humbly with God as the prophet teach­es”.

The head of the An­gli­can Church here said that to be sin­cere is to serve “with gen­uine care for the peo­ple, mod­el­ling the in­tegri­ty de­scribed by Paul, who con­duct­ed him­self “with god­ly sin­cer­i­ty.

“May this elec­tion sea­son be peace­ful, re­spect­ful, and marked by the kind of con­duct that re­flects the na­tion we hope to be. May your words be sea­soned with grace, your ac­tions re­flect Christ’s love, and your pres­ence in our com­mu­ni­ties be a sign of hope, ” Bish­op Maxwell wrote.

Po­lit­i­cal ob­servers say de­spite the pres­ence of oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties, the elec­tion is a straight fight be­tween the BLP and the DLP, with the DLP urg­ing Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley to post­pone the polls be­cause of the thou­sands of Bar­ba­di­ans who may not be able to vote be­cause of in­ac­cu­ra­cies in the elec­toral reg­is­ter.

Thorne had pub­licly raised con­cerns about the ac­cu­ra­cy and readi­ness of the vot­ers’ list and the pre­pared­ness of the Elec­toral and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), prompt­ing a re­sponse from Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley de­fend­ing the in­tegri­ty of the elec­toral process.

The dead­line for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion and trans­fers closed on Mon­day.

Elec­tion of­fi­cials say they are ful­ly pre­pared to con­duct Tues­day’s Nom­i­na­tion Day with Chief Elec­toral Of­fi­cer Sher­land Tur­ton say­ing that there were no lin­ger­ing chal­lenges.

“We need­ed to have the nom­i­na­tion cen­tres in place, per­son­nel to man the nom­i­na­tion cen­tres, the po­lice to be in­formed to be present on the day, to have the can­di­dates aware of, and to col­lect their nom­i­na­tion pack­ages,” Tur­ton said.

Un­der the law gov­ern­ing elec­tions, the Pres­i­dent, act­ing on the ad­vice of a min­is­ter – which in this case would be ei­ther the Prime Min­is­ter or the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment – may de­lay polling day to al­low time for the list to be cor­rect­ed.

But speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence, the BLP gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Jerome Wal­cott, said the writ has been is­sued by the Pres­i­dent, and the date has been set and BLP is pro­ceed­ing with its cam­paign as sched­uled.

“The op­po­si­tion par­ties have been call­ing for an elec­tion… you call for an elec­tion, and when it comes, you’re not ready and you cry,” he said.

“I don’t know. We’ll see how that goes, but as far as I’m con­cerned, the Bar­ba­dos Labour Par­ty, the elec­tion is on the 11th of Feb­ru­ary, and we are ready – red and ready,” he told re­porters.

CMC/ah/ir/2026.