Barbados has been elected to chair the Association of Caribbean Electoral Organisations (ACEO) for the year 2010.????????????????????????????????????

This was one of the major outcomes of a recent meeting at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre. The main aim of the meeting was to re-launch the association, after an interim committee was set up in Jamaica last year.??

General Assembly approval was also given to increase the number of countries represented on the Board from five to seven. The other states elected to serve were: Guyana, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda and Trinidad and Tobago.

Other decisions made at the conference included the housing of the ACEO Secretariat in Jamaica; and the establishment and maintenance of a website by Trinidad and Tobago with assistance from the Organisation of American States, which also reaffirmed its commitment to the association’s work.

In addition, it was agreed that the ACEO should meet annually, with next year’s meeting scheduled for Trinidad and Tobago.

The overall objective of the association is to foster a self-sufficient mechanism of horizontal cooperation among electoral organisations in the Caribbean. This is intended to improve their capability to register voters, promote voter turnout and implement elections.??

The organisation’s founding meeting was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1998.?? It has 20 members, namely Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

gapplewhaite@barbados.gov.bb

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