By Peter Richards
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Feb 9, CMC – Barbadians go to the polls on Wednesday to elect a new government with political observers indicating that while the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is high favoured to retain power, it will do so without the overwhelming majority it enjoyed in the last two parliaments.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley called the general election more than a year ahead of the scheduled constitutional deadline no doubt hoping to repeat the 30-nil victories the BLP enjoyed in the last two general elections.
The Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) said an estimated 271 205 persons are eligible to vote on Wednesday with the Chief Electoral Officer, Sherland Turton, saying “we have our books ready, every constituency returning officer would have checked the books to ensure that they were okay, properly sequenced in numbers. So, we are ready”.
But the leader of the main opposition Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Ralph Thorne, has repeatedly raised concerns about what he described as irregularities in the voters’ list, alleging the removal of eligible voters and the inclusion of deceased persons.
“A list of over 8 000 persons was published to be disenfranchised and they were given a matter of days to have that rectified. That is not right,” Thorne told reporters on Nomination Day on January 27, and that thousands of Barbadians were at risk of being disenfranchised with little time for correction.
(Details in Politics section)
CMC/2026