Feb 3, 2021
One Month to Municipal Elections 2021
The next round of municipal elections is exactly one month away. And while it doesn’t normally attract the level of campaign fanfare and prominence as the general elections, these local elections are important as they directly impact the quality of life of those who live in urban areas. According to the Elections and Boundaries Department, as of December 2020, there are ninety-two thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight registered voters across the nine municipalities. But registration was completed on January twenty-fifth, so that number is expected to increase. In the 2018 Municipal Elections, there were one hundred and fourteen thousand five hundred and seventy-four registered voters, which put the December 2020 count short of twenty-one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six registered voters. This is a result of the cleaning up of the voters’ list during the re-registration process. In the 2018 municipal elections, some sixty-five thousand five hundred and sixty-nine voters went to the polls; that’s a fifty-seven point twenty-three percent voter turnout. It’s left to be seen if the pandemic will have any bearing at all on this year’s voter turnout. The U.D.P. has named all its candidates, and the P.U.P. still has two remaining slates to be named in the coming days. Here’s a look at the slates that have already been published.