Ke­jan Haynes 

The fi­nal re­port of the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group (COG) on the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion has raised con­cern over al­le­ga­tions of bribery on polling day and the con­tin­ued lack of le­gal con­trols on cam­paign fi­nanc­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the COG “not­ed re­ports of elec­toral of­fences, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions of bribery on elec­tion day.”

It rec­om­mend­ed that all such re­ports be prop­er­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and dealt with through the jus­tice sys­tem, stat­ing: “It strong­ly rec­om­mends that re­port­ed of­fences be prompt­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed, pros­e­cut­ed and ad­ju­di­cat­ed to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty, de­ter fu­ture vi­o­la­tions, and safe­guard the in­tegri­ty of the elec­toral process in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The re­port did not iden­ti­fy the in­di­vid­u­als or par­ties in­volved in the al­leged bribery but not­ed the im­por­tance of prompt en­force­ment to main­tain pub­lic con­fi­dence in elec­tions.

On cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, the COG re­it­er­at­ed con­cerns raised in pre­vi­ous re­ports, crit­i­cis­ing the ab­sence of le­gal reg­u­la­tions on po­lit­i­cal par­ty fund­ing. While the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act caps a can­di­date’s spend­ing at TT$50,000, there is no cor­re­spond­ing lim­it or dis­clo­sure re­quire­ment for po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

The COG de­scribed this gap as a se­ri­ous short­com­ing and re­peat­ed its call for Par­lia­ment to en­act the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple (Amend­ment) Bill, 2020, which was orig­i­nal­ly in­tro­duced in 2015 and in­cludes sev­er­al pro­vi­sions to im­prove trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The bill pro­pos­es lim­its on con­tri­bu­tions from in­di­vid­u­als and en­ti­ties manda­to­ry dis­clo­sure of do­na­tions and cam­paign ex­pen­di­ture and fair ac­cess to state and non-state me­dia dur­ing cam­paigns, among oth­er rec­om­men­da­tions.

The re­port not­ed that “this has be­come in­creas­ing­ly ur­gent” and rec­om­mend­ed the cre­ation of a mech­a­nism to mon­i­tor cam­paign spend­ing by both par­ties and can­di­dates, in­clud­ing de­c­la­ra­tions of the source of funds.

It al­so called on Par­lia­ment to em­pow­er the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) to es­tab­lish and en­force spend­ing lim­its, stat­ing:

“The EBC should be em­pow­ered by Par­lia­ment to es­tab­lish clear and en­force­able spend­ing lim­its to en­sure a lev­el play­ing field and to mon­i­tor and en­force cam­paign fi­nance reg­u­la­tions for both in­di­vid­ual can­di­dates and po­lit­i­cal par­ties.”

Sep­a­rate­ly, the re­port ac­knowl­edged that the 2025 cam­paign pe­ri­od was gen­er­al­ly peace­ful, but point­ed out that vol­un­tary codes of con­duct such as those mon­i­tored by the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour re­mained un­en­force­able un­der law.

The COG said these codes have helped pro­mote more civ­il cam­paigns but in­sist­ed that for­mal reg­u­la­tion is nec­es­sary to ad­dress fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety and elec­toral mis­con­duct.