As the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es via com­mu­ni­ty spread con­tin­ue to rise, there are more calls for Pres­i­dent Weekes to use her of­fice to en­sure post­pone­ment of the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, sched­uled for Mon­day 10 Au­gust 2020.

The lat­est call comes from en­vi­ron­men­tal lob­by group, Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea (FFOS), who has writ­ten to Her Ex­cel­len­cy Paula-Mae Weekes on the mat­ter.

In a let­ter signed by Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary, Gary Aboud, FFOS is urg­ing Pres­i­dent Weekes to post­pone the elec­tion, cit­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of oth­er re­gion­al coun­tries who saw in­creas­es in their COVID-19 cas­es, fol­low­ing na­tion­al elec­tions.

The full text of the FFOS’ cor­re­spon­dence to the Pres­i­dent, fol­lows…

Dear Pres­i­dent Weekes,

Re: RE­QUEST­ING POST­PONE­MENT OF THE 2020 GEN­ER­AL ELEC­TION

We are con­cerned for the health and safe­ty of the pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go with the up­com­ing 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. We fear we may face the same fate as Suri­name.

The Suri­namese Gov­ern­ment held their Gen­er­al Elec­tion on the 25 May, 2020. Be­fore their elec­tion, the num­ber of Covid-19 vic­tims were min­i­mal with on­ly eleven con­firmed cas­es. How­ev­er, af­ter their elec­tion the num­ber of pos­i­tive cas­es in­creased at an ex­po­nen­tial rate and are cur­rent­ly at one thou­sand six hun­dred and sev­en cas­es.

Our Gen­er­al Elec­tion is sched­uled for the 10" of Au­gust 2020 and with­out any spe­cif­ic leg­is­la­tion to com­mand prop­er hy­giene prac­tices in pub­lic places and pub­lic gath­er­ings, we are con­cerned that the Covid-19 will ac­cel­er­ate. It will be very dif­fi­cult to main­tain so­cial dis­tanc­ing on elec­tion day plus there are too many risks in­volved in dip­ping one's fin­ger in­to a shared pot of ink.

We urge you with the great­est of re­spect to con­sid­er a mere post­pone­ment of the elec­tion for thir­ty, six­ty or pos­si­bly 90 days which is well with­in the time frame for our elec­tion. We are sure that every right think­ing cit­i­zen will agree that pub­lic safe­ty and the pro­tec­tion of life must al­ways be our first con­sid­er­a­tion.

We thank you for con­sid­er­ing our mes­sage and re­main,

Sin­cere­ly and re­spect­ful­ly,

Gary Aboud
Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary