Slow going for Mitchell

President of the Bajan Free Party (BFP) Alex Mitchell is asking that electors engaged in nominating candidates be granted much-needed time from work to perform their civic responsibility.

He expressed the sentiment after he was almost forced to forfeit his spot in the November 11 St George North by-election because he did not have the necessary support to complete the nomination process at the Valley Resource Centre.

According to election regulations, a prospective candidate must have at least four electors to successfully complete the nomination process. One of them must propose the nomination, which must be seconded by another elector, followed by the assent of two others – all from the constituency.

Mitchell, who had hoped to begin the nomination process at 9:30 a.m. was still awaiting the arrival of his electors over an hour after arriving at the nomination centre. The BFP party leader explained that, in his case, the electors were having difficulty getting time off from work.

“You can get a lot of people to back you up, but very few will be able to show up on the actual day because everybody is desperate for work, and they would rather go to work than to do their civic duty,” Mitchell told Barbados TODAY.

“With this process right now, you need four people for each of the six parties. That’s only 24 people, and 24 people showing up for work two hours later is not going to collapse the entire economy. It is very stressful mentally when you have to depend on people, especially when they are operating on Bajan time.

“There needs to be something in place preventing them from being penalised for coming here for an hour or two in order to get things done before going back to work,” the political hopeful added.

At approximately 10:45 a.m., enough electors showed up, allowing Mitchell to be nominated. (KS)