Senate Votes To Postpone Local Government Election

Senate votes to postpone local Government Election: The Senate has agreed to postpone the Local Government election which would have been due on Sunday. But not without criticism from the Opposition about the impact of the General Election on the country’s management of the pandemic which they argue has gone from positive to negative.

Like the leader of the Opposition People’s National Party, Mark Golding, Senator Lambert Brown says the current legislative framework for the postponement

The Local Government elections remove the fixed time line associated with the election process.

The Local Government Election would’ve been due on Sunday, November 29. Under the law, the Local Government election should be called within 90 days of the last election. As a result, February 27, 2020 has been marked as the day. 

But there was an amendment to lengthen that time from three to twelve months, extending that period to February 27, 2022.

The Government cited the health of the country, the recent heavy rainfall which is estimated to cost the country hundreds of millions, as reasons for the extension.

But Senator Damion Crawford while agreeing with the postponement argued that the Government has failed to acknowledge its role in the declaration of the general election on September 3 and the country’s COVID-19  cases.

Less than 24-hours after the being elected, the Minister of Health announced that the country was in community transmission phase.