KY­RON REG­IS

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

PNM can­di­date for Tu­na­puna Es­mond Forde has said that there was no re­al dif­fi­cul­ty this morn­ing about the vot­ing process at the St. Mary’s An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Tacarigua.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia Ltd (GML) Forde said: “No one left, no one made noise.” Nonethe­less, Forde al­lud­ed to a very long line.

De­scrib­ing the process he said: “When I came out this morn­ing I saw one long line, but then there are four polling di­vi­sions sit­u­at­ed in this school but they did not sep­a­rate each line, there­fore the line was run­ning all along the Main Road.”

Ac­cord­ing to Forde, it was on­ly af­ter of­fi­cials rec­og­nized the length of the line that the po­lice of­fi­cers and the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) agents de­cid­ed that they were go­ing to sep­a­rate the long line in­to four lines, which short­ened the en­tire process.

Forde likened the process on the in­side of the school to any oth­er gen­er­al or lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion ex­cept for so­cial dis­tanc­ing and san­i­tiz­ing.

He added: “The process ba­si­cal­ly was just like any oth­er elec­tion, the on­ly dif­fer­ence is that I was san­i­tized be­fore I en­tered the room and then we have to keep our lil’ so­cial dis­tanc­ing and move up ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Re­gard­ing the health pro­to­cols and guide­lines be­ing ob­served, Forde said that as far as he was con­cerned, every­one had on their masks.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the EBC on all na­tion­al elec­tions held since the start of the 21st cen­tu­ry, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that wins Tu­na­puna nor­mal­ly wins the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Since 2000 the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that won the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy even­tu­al­ly went on to win the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Cur­rent­ly, Forde is stacked against UNC Can­di­date David Nakhid, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) con­tender Mau­rice Downes and Trinidad Hu­man­i­ty Cam­paign (THC) can­di­date Mar­cus Ramkissoon.