To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Amid the pre­vail­ing doom and gloom about the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of stan­dards and the on­go­ing dis­qui­et about the qual­i­ty of ser­vice pro­vid­ed by State in­sti­tu­tions in gen­er­al and the pub­lic ser­vice in par­tic­u­lar, there are some in­sti­tu­tions of the State whose per­for­mance can stand up to the glob­al scruti­ny. One such in­sti­tu­tion is the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, a body which is es­sen­tial to the preser­va­tion of democ­ra­cy by its con­duct of elec­tions that are both free and fair and free from fear. Fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion held on May 24, the Elec­tions and and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) is prepar­ing to su­per­vise its sec­ond na­tion­al elec­tion in two months–a lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll sched­uled to be held on Ju­ly 26.

The lo­cal gov­ern­ment poll, to be held in 20 days, would be the EBC's third elec­tion in a lit­tle more than two-and-a-half years and its tenth poll in a lit­tle more than a decade–five gen­er­al elec­tions, three elec­tions for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and two at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el. It would be fair to say that there have been very few com­plaints about the way in which elec­tions have been con­duct­ed in this coun­try. And this is de­spite the fact that the West­min­ster sys­tem, by al­low­ing a prime min­is­ter to call a gen­er­al elec­tion at any time in a five-year pe­ri­od, places the EBC un­der tremen­dous pres­sure of hav­ing to pre­pare for a gen­er­al elec­tion with on­ly five weeks no­tice. This pres­sure is far from be­ing the­o­ret­i­cal, as demon­strat­ed ear­li­er this year when then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dis­solved Par­lia­ment on April 8 and called the gen­er­al elec­tion a week lat­er.

For that gen­er­al elec­tion, the EBC was un­der in­tense pres­sure to en­sure that the vot­ers' list was ac­cu­rate, that peo­ple knew which polling sta­tions they should vote at and that vot­ers knew of and obeyed the elec­tion rules. It is tru­ly to the cred­it of the EBC that it was able to pull off the gen­er­al elec­tion with no one com­plain­ing pub­licly that they did not get a chance to ex­er­cise their fran­chise. This is some­thing that not even the elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry au­thor­i­ties in the Unit­ed King­dom can boast of–as there were hun­dreds if not thou­sands of peo­ple who were dis­en­fran­chised in their gen­er­al elec­tion, which was al­so held in May.

The EBC de­serves the coun­try's deep­est grat­i­tude for its ster­ling role in pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing T&T's democ­ra­cy. The na­tion's po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the peo­ple of the coun­try should al­so come in for praise. There is no in­sti­tu­tion in the world that can su­per­vise a per­fect elec­tion if the main po­lit­i­cal par­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in the elec­tion are not com­mit­ted to the high­est stan­dards of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tice. Elec­tions in a prop­er­ly func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy are the ex­pres­sion of the will of a peo­ple, and there­fore a well-run elec­toral sys­tem de­pends on the fair­ness of the vot­ers.

The EBC has ful­filled its mis­sion of pro­mot­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing democ­ra­cy through the reg­is­tra­tion of in­di­vid­u­als in ac­cor­dance with the law, the con­duct of free and fair elec­tions sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­scribed, and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion plans and pro­grammes to sup­port these ob­jec­tives. We take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to pay trib­ute to the chief elec­tions of­fi­cer, the com­mis­sion­ers of the EBC and all its staff. As the new gov­ern­ment be­gins the process of de­lib­er­at­ing on po­ten­tial re­cip­i­ents for this na­tion's high­est In­de­pen­dence Day award, we can think of no high­er trib­ute to the con­tin­u­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the EBC than for the ap­pro­pri­ate recog­ni­tion of the in­sti­tu­tion's work in pre­serv­ing T&T's democ­ra­cy.