Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go was the 15th time since In­de­pen­dence in 1962 that na­tion­als of this coun­try who are 18 years or old­er have vot­ed to choose a po­lit­i­cal par­ty to lead the coun­try.

The as­sess­ment by the head of the Cari­com Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion, Ian Hugh­es, is that vot­ers were able to cast their bal­lots with­out in­tim­i­da­tion or fear and that the out­come of the ex­er­cise re­flect­ed the will of the T&T elec­torate.

It should be a source of pride to the pop­u­la­tion of T&T that it has main­tained a con­sis­tent record of free and fair gen­er­al elec­tions since the first post-In­de­pen­dence vote in 1966.

There are many coun­tries around the world, and some in this re­gion, in which the vot­ing-age pop­u­la­tion is not able to se­lect their lead­ers pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly in elec­tions that can stand up to in­ter­na­tion­al scruti­ny.

While there are pos­i­tives as­so­ci­at­ed with democ­ra­cy in T&T, it is trou­bling that in Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, on­ly 53.92 per cent of those el­i­gi­ble to vote—a to­tal of 622,181 vot­ers out of a to­tal of an elec­torate of 1,153,876 adults—both­ered to ex­er­cise their fran­chise.

This is the low­est turnout of vot­ers since the gen­er­al elec­tion in 1971, a bal­lot that was the sub­ject of an ac­tive no-vote cam­paign by all ma­jor op­po­si­tion par­ties, who were protest­ing in the af­ter­math of fraud al­le­ga­tions re­lat­ed to the vot­ing ma­chines used in pre­vi­ous elec­tions.

The turnout on Mon­day was al­so even low­er than the pre­vi­ous elec­tion in 2020, which was held at a time when Trinidad and To­ba­go was un­der lock­down as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The con­stituen­cies with the small­est per­cent­age of vot­ers on Mon­day were Laven­tille West, with 35.20 per cent of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers show­ing up; Port-of-Spain South, with 36.09 per cent of the elec­tors vot­ing, and Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, with 38.77 per cent turn­ing out to vote.

These three con­stituen­cies have con­sti­tut­ed the heart­land of the for­mer rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), as in 1986, when the par­ty was al­most wiped off the elec­toral map, Laven­tille and Port-of-Spain East were two of the three con­stituen­cies that vot­ed for T&T’s old­est par­ty.

With the PNM re­ceiv­ing 97,836 few­er votes in 2025 than it did in 2020, it is clear that it has a great deal of work to do to make it­self elec­table again. This is rel­e­vant be­cause a strong op­po­si­tion makes for a strong gov­ern­ment.

The low turnout in the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion may be due to a gen­er­al ap­a­thy among younger vot­ers or a be­lief that the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem is not giv­ing them any­thing. Wher­ev­er the prob­lem lies, this is­sue of low vot­er turnout is one that must be ad­dressed by the new Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment as well.

One of the oth­er com­plaints about Mon­day’s process was the slow pace with which the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly es­tab­lished body that over­sees T&T’s elec­tions, pub­li­cised the re­sults of the vot­ing. The EBC needs to roll out a bet­ter sys­tem of com­mu­ni­cat­ing re­sults that en­sures the peo­ple anx­ious­ly fol­low­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, on ra­dio, tele­vi­sion or on­line, re­ceive the vot­ing re­sults ex­pe­di­tious­ly.

Com­plaints about the slow pace of vot­ing, as well as the EBC’s gen­er­al man­age­ment of the elec­tions, in­clud­ing its com­mu­ni­ca­tion with all rel­e­vant po­lit­i­cal par­ties, should al­so be se­ri­ous­ly re­viewed and ad­dressed in its elec­tion post-mortem.