Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Cari­com Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion (CEOM) and the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group say Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceived an A grade.

Speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Hilton Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, CEOM chief of mis­sion, Ian Hugh­es, de­scribed the process as good.

De­spite me­dia re­ports of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, Hugh­es em­pha­sised that noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant was ob­served or re­port­ed. He com­pli­ment­ed the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) on its han­dling of the elec­toral process. How­ev­er, a few in­stances of polling sta­tions not be­ing user-friend­ly for the dif­fer­ent­ly abled were not­ed.

Hugh­es added, “Based on the train­ing that we read about and based on the pro­ce­dures that were fol­lowed, we would say that they would be very high up there, in the high­er per­centile. I don’t want to be con­sid­ered an easy lec­tur­er who marks the pa­pers and sim­ply al­lows per­sons to pass, but they would have been in the up­per per­centile. Be­cause of what we saw yes­ter­day when you went on. So, I would say over­all, the process went re­al­ly well yes­ter­day.”

The Com­mon­wealth group, mean­while, re­it­er­at­ed its call for cam­paign fi­nance re­form.

Evarist Bar­to­lo, the Com­mon­wealth group’s chair­man, said the need for cam­paign fi­nanc­ing re­form was more ur­gent than be­fore.

He stat­ed, “The group notes a lim­it­ed reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for cam­paign fi­nance. We re­it­er­ate the 2015 Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group’s state­ment that the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) is re­flect­ing on pro­pos­als to reg­u­late reg­is­tra­tion and cam­paign fi­nanc­ing of po­lit­i­cal par­ties.”

Bar­to­lo al­so re­mind­ed that ten years ago, the group rec­om­mend­ed that the in­com­ing Par­lia­ment, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers pri­ori­tise this process.

He said, “This has be­come more ur­gent.”

Since then, there have been talks from both ma­jor par­ties about bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress cam­paign fi­nanc­ing. Bar­to­lo said this was an is­sue through­out the world and called on civ­il so­ci­ety to cham­pi­on the cause.

He stressed the need to take the pow­er away from fi­nan­cial donors and put it back in the hands of vot­ers.

Bar­to­lo al­so it would not be in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try for ob­servers to ab­stain from mon­i­tor­ing elec­tions in the coun­try un­til the cam­paign fi­nance is­sue is ad­dressed. He al­so called for leg­is­la­tion to ad­dress the use of state re­sources to ad­vance a gov­ern­ment’s po­lit­i­cal agen­da.