Derek Achong

High Court judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er has dis­missed five elec­tion pe­ti­tions filed last year by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chal­leng­ing the re­sults of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions in five mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies.

The UNC chal­lenged the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion's (EBC) de­ci­sion to ex­tend the vot­ing time by one hour to fa­cil­i­tate vot­ers in Trinidad due to in­clement weath­er.

The orig­i­nal pe­ti­tions chal­lenged the re­sults of six mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, To­co/San­gre Grande, Tu­na­puna, St Joseph, San fer­nan­do West and Moru­ga/Table­land af­ter the UNC's 23 to 18 de­feat.

One of the pe­ti­tions, for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro con­stituen­cy, was struck out be­cause it was served too late.

Dean-Ar­mor­er ruled that the EBC did over­step their statu­to­ry re­mit by ex­tend­ing the hours, how­ev­er, she felt they act­ed gen­uine­ly and in the in­ter­est of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

The judge said she could not in­val­i­date the polls based on EBC over­step­ping its bound­aries as the re­sult of the elec­tions was not ma­te­ri­al­ly af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion to ex­tend the hours.

Do­ing ba­sic math, Dean-Ar­mor­er, sub­tract­ed the num­ber of vot­ers who vot­ed be­tween six and sev­en pm from the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment can­di­dates in the five con­stituen­cies rep­re­sent­ed in the pe­ti­tion and the re­sult showed that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) par­ty would have still won.

The UNC is like­ly to chal­lenge the judge's de­ci­sion be­fore the Ap­peal Court, which has fi­nal ju­ris­dic­tion on elec­tion pe­ti­tions.