Wes­ley Gib­bings

Lo­cal ob­servers re­port­ed a steady stream of vot­ers through­out the course of the day as the two com­pet­ing par­ties as­sist­ed in en­sur­ing their sup­port­ers reached one of the is­land's 541 polling sta­tions yes­ter­day.

Among the mid-morn­ing vot­ers was Prime Min­is­ter Fre­un­del Stu­art who ex­pressed con­cern about re­ports of al­leged vote-buy­ing by the op­po­si­tion BLP.He how­ev­er ex­pressed con­fi­dence his par­ty would be re­turned to of­fice. "I am left with no doubt," he said.

About an hour ear­li­er, BLP leader Owen Arthur had cast his vote and told re­porters he was "buoyed" by what was viewed then as a high vot­er turnout.Yes­ter­day's elec­tion cli­maxed a bruis­ing cam­paign which fo­cused al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on com­pet­ing strate­gies to ad­dress the coun­try's in­creas­ing­ly un­sta­ble econ­o­my.

The DLP point­ed to its abil­i­ty to avoid de­fault­ing on its in­ter­na­tion­al loans, as has been the case with sev­er­al oth­er Caribbean coun­tries. BLP plat­form speak­ers, mean­while, harped on what they ar­gued was the Stu­art ad­min­is­tra­tion's in­abil­i­ty to deal with high in­fla­tion, un­em­ploy­ment and a grow­ing eco­nom­ic un­der­class.

T&T fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the DLP plat­form late Wednes­day with claims by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Christo­pher Sinck­ler and Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter David Es­t­wick that a win for the BLP would see the en­try of more T&T in­vestors who, in Es­t­wick's words, "want to buy every­thing in Bar­ba­dos."

BLP eco­nom­ic ad­vi­sor, Clyde Mas­coll, mean­while, promised his par­ty would re­duce Val­ue Added Tax (VAT), to­geth­er with the fu­el sur­charge on elec­tric­i­ty bills. He said dur­ing DLP rule since 2008, the poor had grown poor­er and the mid­dle class had strug­gled to sur­vive.

In prepa­ra­tion for last evening's vote count, the po­lice an­nounced crowd con­trol mea­sures to en­sure vic­to­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal cel­e­brants did not break the law. All po­lice leave was can­celled and all state se­cu­ri­ty forces, in­clud­ing "gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ty guards", were ex­pect­ed to take to the streets.

There were 247,211 reg­is­tered vot­ers with 68 DLP, BLP and oth­er can­di­dates seek­ing their sup­port. Just 12 were fe­male and there were 22 can­di­dates who were new­com­ers to na­tion­al elec­tion.

In 2008, the DLP won the elec­tion with 53.21 per cent of the pop­u­lar vote, earn­ing 20 seats in the process. The BLP lost its hold on pow­er with 46.52 per cent of the vote, win­ning ten seats.

DLP leader David Thomp­son died in Oc­to­ber 2010 and Stu­art was nom­i­nat­ed to re­place him as prime min­is­ter. A Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices (CADRES) poll pub­lished days be­fore yes­ter­day's elec­tion had pre­dict­ed a ten to 13 seat mar­gin of vic­to­ry for the BLP.