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Thursday, July 31, 2025

Rowley: Commonwealth observers can't make election

by

Gail Alexander
1831 days ago
20200725
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley waves to supporters while walking to the Point Cumana Regional Complex to file nomination papers for the upcoming General Election last Friday.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley waves to supporters while walking to the Point Cumana Regional Complex to file nomination papers for the upcoming General Election last Friday.

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GAIL ALEXAN­DER

There won’t be any Com­mon­wealth ob­servers com­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Au­gust 10 – but there's the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Cari­com ob­servers, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed on Fri­day night.

Row­ley was re­ply­ing to a query about the ob­servers dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s “Fri­day Night Vir­tu­al Lime with Dr Row­ley” pre­sen­ta­tion, spot­light­ing Row­ley.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had writ­ten to him re­cent­ly ask­ing for elec­tion ob­servers from var­i­ous fo­rums, in­clud­ing the Com­mon­wealth, Cari­com and Carter Cen­tre. Row­ley im­me­di­ate­ly fired off let­ters to the Com­mon­wealth and Cari­com re­quest­ing del­e­ga­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar again raised the is­sue on Fri­day, not­ing the elec­tion was just over two weeks away and point­ing out the ob­servers would need to get in­to T&T by this week­end to un­der­go the manda­to­ry quar­an­tine and get out in time to ob­serve the elec­tion.

But on Fri­day dur­ing the Face­book live event, the PM said the Com­mon­wealth had replied say­ing they didn’t think they would be able to come be­cause of the cost. He not­ed that quar­an­ti­ning a del­e­ga­tion for the re­quired two-week pe­ri­od in­volved costs. It was al­so dif­fi­cult to get to T&T since there are no com­mer­cial flights cur­rent­ly due to the lock­down of the bor­ders due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions. Since they hadn’t ar­rived by Fri­day, he said, “We may not have a Com­mon­wealth team.”

He said Gov­ern­ment couldn’t even say it could as­sist in bring­ing in the team in the event they did a favourable re­port and then the PNM might be ac­cused of pay­ing for the team. “We’re not do­ing that …,” he said.

He said Gov­ern­ment thought it could ask a third par­ty to as­sist the team and is talk­ing to some, but hasn’t got­ten an an­swer. He said if the Com­mon­wealth team had to get here, that should have been by this Fri­day, in or­der to com­plete a two-week quar­an­tine and be able to move around for elec­tion day.

But he didn’t think they could come lat­er “un­less they sit in a room and mon­i­tor us on TV”.

Row­ley said Gov­ern­ment al­so in­vit­ed Cari­com ob­servers and Cari­com’s sec­re­tari­at said three coun­tries had agreed to pro­vide a team.

“So we’re wait­ing to hear what that means. The sec­re­tari­at will now ask each coun­try to send a rep­re­sen­ta­tive,” Row­ley said.

How­ev­er, he said the Cari­com team will al­so have to get here by this week­end. But he said if T&T doesn’t get them, “We’re no ba­nana re­pub­lic and over­ly trou­ble­some – we con­duct our­selves. Un­less some­one in­tends to mis­be­have,”

But Row­ley said he’d have liked ob­servers to be here to see what they do, ad­mit­ting that "some­times they make in­ter­est­ing com­ments if you have to make ad­just­ments”.

2025 General Election


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