DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Can­di­dates across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide boast­ed about a high vot­er turnout for the Lengua/In­di­an Walk Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment by-elec­tion yes­ter­day.

Al­though there was a steady stream of elec­tors this time around, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­cused each oth­er of elec­tion-re­lat­ed in­frac­tions, in­clud­ing can­vass­ing with­in the lim­it of the polling di­vi­sion and even bribery.

When polls opened at 6 am, vot­ers walked in­to the five polling sta­tions in the dis­trict.

There were first-time vot­ers such as 18-year-old Sher­lon Saun­ders, who said his fam­i­ly in­sist­ed he ex­er­cise his de­mo­c­ra­t­ic fran­chise.

“Well, meh fam­i­ly, ba­si­cal­ly, they like pol­i­tics very bad and meh grand­moth­er say as soon as ah turn 18 years of age ah have to come and vote,” he said.

There were al­so vet­er­an vot­ers like Pa­tr­isha Sharpe, who said the turnout was much bet­ter than last year.

“I guess peo­ple re­alised that this one is se­ri­ous and they have to come out to vote. What I see there, some­times you know for these lo­cal elec­tions it does have few­er peo­ple com­ing out but what I saw there this morn­ing... they had more peo­ple than the last time, es­pe­cial­ly for this one per­son,” she said, ad­mit­ting she sup­port­ed Granthume.

There were no hic­cups for many vot­ers who spoke at the Fifth Com­pa­ny Bap­tist School. A fam­i­ly of four de­scribed the ex­er­cise as seam­less.

“The process was very smooth. Every­thing was laid out in a very log­i­cal man­ner and I was in and out in about 10 min­utes,” Christo­pher Rocke, 19, said.

This was echoed by his moth­er Cleopa­tra Phillips-Rocke, who praised the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) for the sim­ple, easy and or­gan­ised process.

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were al­so ex­pressed by Christo­pher’s broth­er Collin, dad Phillip and passers-by who said every­thing went well.

Last year, at the end of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE) on Au­gust 14, PNM can­di­date Aut­ly Granthume was de­clared the win­ner over the UNC’s Nicole Gopaul-Jones. Un­of­fi­cial­ly, Granthume cel­e­brat­ed a vic­to­ry af­ter ob­tain­ing 1,430 votes to Gopaul-Jones’ 1,425. How­ev­er, af­ter two re­counts, both can­di­dates re­ceived 1,428 votes.

While the EBC de­clared a by-elec­tion was nec­es­sary to break the dead­lock, the UNC filed a pe­ti­tion on Au­gust 21 chal­leng­ing the re­sults.

How­ev­er, the Court of Ap­peal dis­missed the pe­ti­tion in March, mak­ing way for the by-elec­tion.

Al­le­ga­tions and counter claims

While yes­ter­day’s ex­er­cise was prob­lem-free for them, there were al­le­ga­tions of il­le­gal prac­tices lev­elled against the PNM by UNC Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin, who lodged an of­fi­cial com­plaint with the po­lice.

“We just have some mi­nor is­sues with some can­vass­ing by this Fifth Com­pa­ny Bap­tist School, which I re­port­ed both to the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer, al­so to the rov­ing of­fi­cer, we would have made a call. I am hop­ing that it’s ad­dressed be­cause it’s an is­sue that we would have no­ticed in the last elec­tion. There was se­ri­ous can­vass­ing with­in the bound­aries that is laid out by EBC. Even this morn­ing they would have made some of the mock sta­tions that the rel­e­vant par­ties set up move and we com­plied,” she said.

Guardian Me­dia’s team ob­served sev­er­al peo­ple wear­ing blue—the colour worn by sup­port­ers of the PNM—in­side and around the polling sta­tion. Once the re­port was made, po­lice went in­side the school and many of the in­di­vid­u­als left. Ac­cord­ing to the EBC’s laws, can­di­dates or their sup­port­ers can­not use un­due in­flu­ence on elec­tion day.

How­ev­er, the PNM’s co-or­di­na­tor for the dis­trict, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, de­nied the par­ty was can­vass­ing il­le­gal­ly and ac­cused the UNC of com­mit­ting elec­tion-re­lat­ed crimes.

“There are a num­ber of per­sons that are al­lowed to be with­in the 100-feet lim­it. Those would be per­sons who are agents and there are se­lect of­fi­cers who are al­lowed to be there as well. So, I don’t know that which they speak of. What I do know, and I’m right out­side the Princes Town West Sec­ondary School, and I can tell you that there has been al­leged bribery by the UNC right out­side of the area,” she said.