Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Amidst the threat of rain and the in­creased spread of COVID-19, hun­dreds of vot­ers lined up be­fore dawn yes­ter­day wait­ing to cast their bal­lots in the two south mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies.

But it would not be long be­fore al­le­ga­tions of dis­crep­an­cies and EBC vi­o­la­tions cropped up in the San Fer­nan­do West and Table­land/Moru­ga con­stituen­cies, prompt­ing in­ter­ven­tions from at­tor­neys and EBC of­fi­cials.

Most of the com­plaints came from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

At the Gulf View Com­mu­ni­ty Com­plex, three polling sta­tions were set up, but COVID-19 re­stric­tions cre­at­ed a bot­tle­neck with lines stretch­ing as far as the Gulf View Link Road. Res­i­dent Son­ny Ramb­harose said he spent two hours wait­ing in line be­fore he fi­nal­ly cast his bal­lot.

“There is one door be­ing used which every­one has to ex­it and en­ter. There are two doors but they are keep­ing one locked. I don’t know why,” Ramb­harose said. 

At­tor­ney for the UNC Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al said in the past the two doors were opened but this year, the EBC changed the lay­out of the polling sta­tions, lock­ing one door and cre­at­ing three sep­a­rate lines.

“This caused chaos and peo­ple who were out here be­fore 6 am are on­ly now be­ing al­lowed to vote, two hours lat­er,” Lutch­me­di­al said.

Hun­dreds of peo­ple stood un­der um­brel­las in the hot sun.

Lutch­me­di­al claimed many elec­tors from Bel Air and Gulf View left the fa­cil­i­ty in frus­tra­tion.

“Many el­der­ly peo­ple, as well as dis­abled elec­tors, are not be­ing al­lowed to dri­ve up to the cen­tre. I have spo­ken to the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers and they have agreed to look in­to this mat­ter. They have not ex­plained why they are not open­ing up the sec­ond door but they said open­ing it may not rec­ti­fy the prob­lem be­cause the bot­tle­neck is where the ac­tu­al vot­ing is tak­ing place, “Lutch­me­di­al said.

“I don’t want to spec­u­late that this is de­lib­er­ate. I have spo­ken to the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer and I want to see if the prob­lems are be­ing rec­ti­fied be­fore I de­cide whether this is de­lib­er­ate.”
She said she planned to write to the EBC’s re­turn­ing of­fi­cer, not­ing that in the past both doors were open and on­ly two polling sta­tions were lo­cat­ed at the cen­tre.

She al­so called for stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures say­ing it could not be that the el­der­ly and in­firmed are banned for dri­ving in­to the polling sta­tion’s yard in some ar­eas and oth­er ar­eas they are dis­al­lowed.

Mean­while, at the AS­JA Girls’ polling sta­tion, el­der­ly peo­ple were walk­ing from Todd Street to the sta­tion.

 Sobers, who vot­ed at the Mon Re­pos RC, said he was hap­py with the COVID-19 pro­to­cols. He said he had worked ex­treme­ly hard in the con­stituen­cy and was con­fi­dent of a vic­to­ry. 

At the Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituen­cy, UNC can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin al­so re­port­ed dis­crep­an­cies at the five polling sta­tions in the hot­ly con­test­ed seat. Af­ter cast­ing her vote at the St Mary’s Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school Ben­jamin said the UNC had some set­backs which were lat­er sort­ed out by its le­gal team.

“At this polling sta­tion, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer moved our mock sta­tion. She was be­ing a lit­tle... I don’t want to use those words... But the sys­tem is still func­tion­ing even though they were mov­ing in­di­vid­u­als,” Ben­jamin said.

She ex­plained that at the New Grant Gov­ern­ment School the UNC’s le­gal team again had to in­ter­vene when the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer re­fused to al­low the polling agent and the sub-agent to view the bal­lot box when it was first opened.

“At Marac RC we had prob­lems with mov­ing of the mock sta­tion. There was a prob­lem in Kan­hai Pres­by­ter­ian school as well and my le­gal team sort­ed it out,” she said.

Ben­jamin said she was pleased that vot­ing went smooth­ly. 

“In the con­stituen­cy, we had mi­nor is­sues but we think that vot­ing will pick up again at noon,” Ben­jamin said. 

She ex­plained that there were hun­dreds of peo­ple at the Cowen Hamil­ton Sec­ondary School which housed three polling sta­tions. 

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school, dozens of peo­ple had lined up in front of the build­ing. Vot­ing flowed smooth­ly but some elec­tors like Gajraj Ram­jat­tan said he hoped that the process could have been faster.

“I spent about one hour in the line but I am hap­py I got through,” Ram­jat­tan said.

Glen Gra­ham was ea­ger to say the par­ty he vot­ed for say­ing, “I vote for Gyp­sy, he is from the ris­ing sun.” Gyp­sy had been part of the UNC but switched and be­came the PNM can­di­date for the area. He vot­ed as a spe­cial elec­tor. 

Most of the is­sues were ironed out by mid­day but there con­tin­ued to be long lines at the polling sta­tions in both mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies.