Richard Lord

A three-mem­ber Cari­com Ob­serv­er Mis­sion for next week's gen­er­al elec­tion is ex­pect­ed to pay close at­ten­tion to vot­ing in mar­gin­al seats.

So said deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Dr Roodal Mooni­lal fol­low­ing an hour-long meet­ing with the del­e­ga­tion. The team is be­ing led by for­mer ad­vis­er to the Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al on Haiti, Hugh Chol­monde­ley, of Guyana, and in­cludes deputy Chief of Mis­sions, Dame Bil­lie Miller, for­mer deputy Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and Grace-Anne Crichlow, of Bar­ba­dos.

The team met ear­li­er with of­fi­cials of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. Mooni­lal said the meet­ing at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion was cor­dial. He said sev­er­al con­cerns of the UNC were raised, in­clud­ing elec­tion vi­o­lence be­fore and dur­ing the polls. "They were con­cerned about that, of course," Mooni­lal added.

He said the Op­po­si­tion team, which in­clud­ed for­mer Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, raised the is­sue of bribery of vot­ers and the use of the me­dia by the Gov­ern­ment for ad­dress­es by the Prime Min­is­ter. "They have in­di­cat­ed that they in­tend to mon­i­tor close­ly the mar­gin­al seats as op­posed to all seats," he added. The mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to hold a news con­fer­ence to­day. The team is ex­pect­ed to leave T&T next Wednes­day, two days af­ter the May 24 elec­tion.