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Friday, July 25, 2025

Commonwealth observers flag bribery,

spending gaps and apathy in 2025 election

by

19 days ago
20250706
Commonwealth observers at the Belmont Secondary School during the April 28 General Election.

Commonwealth observers at the Belmont Secondary School during the April 28 General Election.

ROBERTO CODALLO

Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group’s fi­nal re­port on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion has raised mul­ti­ple con­cerns about the coun­try’s elec­toral en­vi­ron­ment, high­light­ing al­le­ga­tions of bribery, gaps in cam­paign fi­nance laws, vot­er dis­en­gage­ment, un­equal me­dia ac­cess, and un­der­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in Par­lia­ment.

The ob­servers were in T&T from April 19 to May 5, 2025, to mon­i­tor the elec­tion, which was held on April 28. In their as­sess­ment, they found the over­all process to be cred­i­ble and peace­ful but point­ed to key ar­eas that re­quire ur­gent re­form.

Among the most se­ri­ous is­sues flagged were re­ports of bribery on elec­tion day. The Ob­serv­er Group said it had re­ceived ac­counts of al­leged vote-buy­ing and oth­er elec­toral of­fences. While spe­cif­ic cas­es were not de­tailed in the re­port, the group urged au­thor­i­ties to prompt­ly in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute any vi­o­la­tions. It warned that fail­ure to act could un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in fu­ture elec­tions and called for swift le­gal ac­tion to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and de­ter sim­i­lar con­duct.

The re­port al­so ex­am­ined the coun­try’s cam­paign fi­nanc­ing rules and found sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­to­ry gaps. While in­di­vid­ual can­di­dates are sub­ject to a $50,000 spend­ing cap un­der the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act, po­lit­i­cal par­ties are not bound by any such lim­its. Nor are they re­quired to dis­close the sources of their fund­ing or pro­vide au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments.

The ob­servers re­peat­ed a rec­om­men­da­tion first made by their coun­ter­parts a decade ear­li­er: that Par­lia­ment should pass the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple (Amend­ment) Bill 2020. This bill in­cludes pro­vi­sions for do­na­tion lim­its, manda­to­ry dis­clo­sures, reg­is­tra­tion of po­lit­i­cal par­ties with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), and equal ac­cess to state and pri­vate me­dia dur­ing cam­paigns. De­spite be­ing in­tro­duced in 2015 and re­vised over the years, the leg­is­la­tion has not been en­act­ed.

In ad­di­tion to call­ing for the pas­sage of the amend­ment bill, the re­port rec­om­mend­ed that a for­mal sys­tem be es­tab­lished to mon­i­tor cam­paign spend­ing by both par­ties and in­di­vid­ual can­di­dates. This would in­clude manda­to­ry de­c­la­ra­tions of the source of funds used dur­ing the cam­paign. The ob­servers ar­gued that such mea­sures were es­sen­tial to cre­at­ing a lev­el play­ing field and en­hanc­ing trans­paren­cy in po­lit­i­cal fi­nanc­ing. They al­so urged Par­lia­ment to give the EBC the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to en­force spend­ing lim­its and in­ves­ti­gate vi­o­la­tions.

Turnout falls to 20-year low amid grow­ing ap­a­thy

The re­port al­so flagged a sharp drop in vot­er turnout, which fell to 54 per cent—the low­est in two decades. The group de­scribed this as part of a wider trend of dis­en­gage­ment and de­clin­ing con­fi­dence in the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly among young peo­ple.

“This de­clin­ing vot­er turnout in elec­tions cor­re­sponds with an in­creas­ing sense of ap­a­thy, as heard by the COG, among the cit­i­zen­ry in Trinidad and To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly among the youth.”

It urged the EBC to in­ten­si­fy civic ed­u­ca­tion and ex­pand out­reach ef­forts to re­verse this trend and pro­mote greater par­tic­i­pa­tion in fu­ture elec­tions.

EBC vis­i­bil­i­ty and bound­ary changes un­der scruti­ny

The EBC was al­so sin­gled out for its lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty and pub­lic en­gage­ment dur­ing the elec­tion pe­ri­od. While the com­mis­sion was praised for its lo­gis­ti­cal han­dling of the poll it­self, ob­servers felt it need­ed to do more to ed­u­cate vot­ers and com­mu­ni­cate with the me­dia.

The re­port al­so raised con­cerns about the EBC’s han­dling of bound­ary changes. In De­cem­ber 2024, the Com­mis­sion re­drew the bound­aries of 16 con­stituen­cies and re­named five oth­ers. While done in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion, the re­port said the EBC should im­prove the trans­paren­cy of this process.

The re­port rec­om­mend­ed reg­u­lar press brief­in­gs, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns, and im­proved co­or­di­na­tion with jour­nal­ists to keep the elec­torate well-in­formed through­out the elec­toral cy­cle.

It al­so raised con­cerns about the EBC’s han­dling of bound­ary changes. In De­cem­ber 2024, the com­mis­sion re­drew the bound­aries of 16 con­stituen­cies and re­named five oth­ers. Al­though the process was car­ried out in ac­cor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion, the re­port urged the EBC to en­hance trans­paren­cy in how such changes are made.

Con­cerns over state me­dia bias and lack of reg­u­la­tion

The re­port al­so ex­am­ined the role of the me­dia in the elec­tion and found that while the press in T&T op­er­ates freely and is gen­er­al­ly re­spect­ed by the pub­lic, there were con­cerns about un­equal cov­er­age dur­ing the cam­paign. Specif­i­cal­ly, it found that the gov­ern­ing par­ty re­ceived dis­pro­por­tion­ate ex­po­sure on state me­dia plat­forms. Ob­servers rec­om­mend­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion to guar­an­tee eq­ui­table ac­cess to state-owned me­dia for all par­ties and in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates.

In ad­di­tion, the re­port high­light­ed the lack of a bind­ing me­dia code of con­duct. It pro­posed that the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty col­lab­o­rate with me­dia hous­es to de­vel­op clear pro­fes­sion­al guide­lines for elec­tion cov­er­age. Me­dia pro­fes­sion­als were al­so en­cour­aged to re­vive the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and to cre­ate a vol­un­tary code fo­cused on eth­i­cal po­lit­i­cal re­port­ing.

Gen­der gap per­sists

On the is­sue of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the re­port ac­knowl­edged the his­toric achieve­ment of hav­ing women in the coun­try’s three top po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions—Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader—for the first time. How­ev­er, it not­ed that this sym­bol­ic progress did not ex­tend to Par­lia­ment as a whole. The share of women elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate re­mained be­low the Caribbean av­er­age of 41 per cent.

Ob­servers point­ed out that the over­all num­ber of women in elect­ed of­fice had de­clined since 2015. While the le­gal frame­work al­lows for equal par­tic­i­pa­tion, the group said struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers con­tin­ue to lim­it the abil­i­ty of women to en­gage mean­ing­ful­ly in pol­i­tics. To ad­dress this, the re­port rec­om­mend­ed that Par­lia­ment es­tab­lish a con­sul­ta­tive com­mit­tee to ex­plore strate­gies for in­creas­ing fe­male par­tic­i­pa­tion.

It al­so urged the gov­ern­ment to adopt and im­ple­ment the Na­tion­al Pol­i­cy on Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment. The pol­i­cy is in­tend­ed to sup­port full par­tic­i­pa­tion by women, men and girls in all as­pects of po­lit­i­cal and civic life and to guar­an­tee equal ac­cess to progress.

These find­ings formed part of the wider sec­tion of the re­port that dealt with par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­clu­sion. Ob­servers al­so ex­am­ined the en­gage­ment of civ­il so­ci­ety, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and cit­i­zen ob­servers, and found short­com­ings in each area. They called on the Gov­ern­ment and the EBC to take more proac­tive steps to in­te­grate these groups in­to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

The re­port con­clud­ed that while the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­flect­ed the will of the peo­ple and was con­duct­ed in a gen­er­al­ly peace­ful and or­der­ly man­ner, there are crit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion­al and le­gal re­forms need­ed to safe­guard the in­tegri­ty and in­clu­sive­ness of fu­ture elec­tions.

The ob­servers said their rec­om­men­da­tions were of­fered in the spir­it of strength­en­ing T&T’s democ­ra­cy and called on all stake­hold­ers to take them se­ri­ous­ly.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to EBC’s Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis for com­ment. She said she was cur­rent­ly out of the coun­try and had not yet read the re­port, but as­sured that she would do so up­on her re­turn and pro­vide a re­sponse.


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