By Neto Baptiste
The Antigua and Barbuda Athletics Association (ABAA) will host its long awaited electoral congress on 24 February.
This was confirmed by president and former national athlete, Everton Cornelius, who said the date was decided when the body’s executive met over a week ago to discuss the matter.
“It’s us collectively deciding on the date and I was even looking for an earlier date but by the time we looked at sending out the information to all the members and giving them the necessary timing to prepare for the elections, constitutionally, we had to go with the 24th and everybody agreed that the date is reasonable once everything goes to plan,” he said.
The athletics association vote was constitutionally due for the first quarter of 2020 but suffered setbacks for varying reasons. Cornelius had however pointed to what he called the unpreparedness of some clubs as a major hindrance while Covid-19 protocols also restricted large gatherings.
The former sprinter said that although the situation has improved, some members are still not up to date.
“The last time I checked I think it was about 20 plus clubs [registered] but there are still people there to finish their registration and to bring their status up to date. We have been asking maybe over the last three years for people to regularise their status based on what we have in our database, but we realised that nobody is really doing anything about that. So what we did was went back to the last election and said that everybody who participated in the last election are eligible to go ahead and bring their status up to date and participate in this upcoming election,” he said.
Cornelius has said he will be seeking a third term in office when the elections are held.