Geisha Kow­lessar

Po­lice of­fi­cers will be out in full force from as ear­ly as 4 am to­day to en­sure there are no dis­rup­tions dur­ing the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams gave the as­sur­ance yes­ter­day, say­ing the po­lice were ful­ly pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ty. "We have pre­pared for the worst...We didn't pre­pare for any­thing less than the worst, be­cause if some­thing hap­pens we would be in a po­si­tion to deal with it," he said. "We def­i­nite­ly don't want to be caught off guard."

He said of­fi­cers as­signed to the var­i­ous polling sta­tions would take up du­ty from 4 am to en­sure the safe­ty of vot­ers. Ac­cord­ing to Williams, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions were be­ing treat­ed with the "same se­ri­ous­ness" as the gen­er­al elec­tion, as all safe­ty mech­a­nisms had been im­ple­ment­ed by the var­i­ous law en­force­ment bod­ies, in­clud­ing 24-hour pa­trols. He said of­fi­cers would be re­quired to be on du­ty un­til in­struc­tions had been giv­en to "stand down." Williams said: "But stand down is just a sig­nal. It does not mean that is the end of polic­ing. Polic­ing con­tin­ues even af­ter the morn­ing of the elec­tion."

Asked if the var­i­ous units of the Po­lice Ser­vice would be sup­ple­ment­ed by sol­diers, he said such re­quest was not di­rect­ly made.

"We haven't re­quest­ed the di­rect sup­port of sol­diers, but they con­tin­ue to pro­vide their ser­vices to the Po­lice Ser­vice," Williams said. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions were last held in the coun­try in 2003 when the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion won in nine mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) four. Lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions were post­poned four times since be­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in 2006. In all, 134 can­di­dates will vie for seats in 14 elec­toral mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties to serve the com­mu­ni­ties they rep­re­sent.

An es­ti­mat­ed 998,787 vot­ers are en­ti­tled to cast their bal­lots to­day. The vot­er turnout in the 2003 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions was 37.98 per cent.