Prime Minister Mia Mottley warned on Tuesday that without legislative adjustments to constituency ratio limits, drastic changes to electoral boundaries will be unavoidable, rendering many existing constituencies “unrecognisable”, as she introduced two major legislative changes, including a constitutional amendment.
The prime minister brought the Constitution Amendment Bill and the Parliament Miscellaneous Provisions Bill before the House to allow the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to do its work after what she described as “an error which took place many years ago”.
The last time constituency boundaries were changed was in 2003 and before then, in 1991.
Mottley said: “Under the Constitution, the difference between constituencies must fall within a specified range. And typically, the initial one which we had was between 90 per cent below or 110 per cent above.
“In other words, every constituency’s numbers must fall within ten per cent of each other.”
The prime minister said: “The reality is that the demographics of Barbados have so changed, and we all know that we’re going through an enumeration process, but the demographics of the country have so changed that even with the current situation, we would literally need to redraw lines across every constituency in some instances that would make them totally unrecognisable in order to be able to fit back into those numbers.
“We recognised that that would change the character of representation completely. And the EBC, in its note to me, recommended that that range now go from 80 per cent to 120 per cent. In other words, a 20 per cent range between constituencies, such that it would bring us more into line with what we have today, recognising that there are some constituencies that are naturally larger and some constituencies that are naturally smaller.”
“The truth is that over the course of the last 22, 23 years, the demographic shifts in Barbados have seen greater settlements move into St Philip, St Thomas, to a lesser extent parts of Christ Church, parts of
St George, and St Peter,” she explained.
Earlier this week, the EBC published the names of over 8 000 people to be purged from the voters’ list.
According to the EBC Chairman, Ramon Alleyne, 4 923 were identified as living overseas for more than five continuous years, while 3 367 were confirmed to have died.
After the enumeration exercise ended in September, the commission opened registration centres and issued circulars to every household, urging people to verify their constituency and polling district information, particularly if they had moved. Alleyne stressed that no one would be removed simply because they did not see an enumerator.
(IMC)
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