President of the Antigua and Barbuda Athletic Association (ABAA) and former national athlete, Everton ‘Mano’ Cornelius, said he will not be pressured “by people” into calling early elections.
His statement was in response to questions regarding previous calls for the current executive to be dissolved and elections held after the body missed deadlines for registering athletes for the World Athletics Championships in August last year.
“The athletic association’s elections are due in 2026 and anytime before that we can determine what we want to do as an association. I am not pushed by people and their knee-jerk reaction to things. People are very emotional and you’ve never heard me come, harping and making noise because I speak from a position of facts and you cannot refute anything that I say when I say it. I don’t react, reaction is for children and I am a thinking man, so I think and when things happen, people must learn to sit down and think and not just say things,” he said.
Cornelius, who has been at the helm of the association for over 10 years, said that although he is free to call the election at any time, he chose to ignore calls to resign following the incident as most critics were looking at the incident from only one angle.
“Something would happen and somebody would say ‘you should resign’, and I am saying that they have a lot of power to say I should resign and you don’t even have the facts of what went down. We need to have that and sometimes I think we need to be very careful of what we’re asking for when we’re asking for it. We need to sit down and do some serious thinking about where we are and seek the truth because sometimes the truth is what we run away from because we like the ugly side of it, and it helps to pull down people and bring down people, and we’re happy with that,” the athletic boss said.
Cornelius, however, reaffirmed that he will not seek re-election whenever the electoral congress is held.
“I know I am not going to do it; I might be around but I think I have given enough to track and field and as I’ve told you, get to know me and you’ll know who I am. We have the financials and we will continue to update them as we go along, or until we are ready to have the elections we just move into it and that’s all it is,” he said.
At least three individuals have publicly declared their intentions to challenge for the top spot. Among them are sitting executive members Shawna Charles-Joseph and Teddy Daley, while former athlete Cleofoster Harris has also indicated his intention to run.
