Renu­ka Singh

For­mer in­ter­im chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) An­cil Den­nis has now lost the Buc­coo/Mt Pleas­ant seat by four votes and not two.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Den­nis said over the past two days he has been sub­ject­ed to “slan­der and ridicule” be­cause he called for the re­count, but said those peo­ple did not un­der­stand the process.

Den­nis said ac­cord­ing to the rules, the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer should on­ly make a de­c­la­ra­tion of which can­di­date has the most votes if by noon on the day fol­low­ing the clos­ing of the poll nei­ther a can­di­date nor his agent re­quests the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer to con­duct a fi­nal count. This, he said, is nor­mal­ly called a re­count.

“I sub­mit­ted my re­quest for a gen­er­al fi­nal count be­fore noon on the day fol­low­ing the clos­ing of the poll, giv­en the ra­zor thin mar­gin of two votes,” he said.

This was wide­ly ex­pect­ed,” Den­nis said.

Den­nis said the fi­nal count took place at the Lam­beau Mul­ti-Pur­pose Fa­cil­i­ty from 3 pm on De­cem­ber 7 to 1 am on De­cem­ber 8.

“Pri­or to the start of the fi­nal count, my ap­point­ed agent en­quired of the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer for Buc­coo/Mt. Pleas­ant about the re­count­ing of the un­used bal­lots un­de­tached from the bal­lot books, but she re­fused to al­low this for all the polling sta­tions,” he said.

This re­fusal, Den­nis said, was a con­tra­ven­tion of the rules which re­quires the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer to count all bal­lots.

“Hence this must in­clude the un­used bal­lots un­de­tached from the bal­lot books,” he said.

“This re­fusal to count all the bal­lots was a ma­te­r­i­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty which based on le­gal prece­dent has the re­al like­li­hood of void­ing and in­val­i­dat­ing the elec­tion re­sults since my re­quest was for a gen­er­al fi­nal count. I have cho­sen not to lit­i­gate this is­sue,” he said.

Den­nis said a gen­er­al fi­nal count in­cludes checks of all doc­u­ments to en­sure that all bal­lots is­sued by the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer are ac­count­ed for.

“This com­plete count­ing and ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise is al­so to en­sure the ac­cu­ra­cy of the elec­tion re­sult,” he said.

“Nev­er­the­less, the fi­nal count, re­count, pro­ceed­ed and it must be stressed that sev­er­al bal­lots were ques­tioned both by the agent for the PDP can­di­date and my agent. For ex­am­ple, a par­tic­u­lar bal­lot which was ini­tial­ly count­ed, was var­ied and con­sid­ered a re­ject­ed bal­lot be­cause the elec­tor cast their vote util­is­ing a pen and not the stamp pro­vid­ed by the EBC,” he said.

“Some re­ject­ed bal­lots were al­so var­ied,” he said.

Den­nis said by let­ters dat­ed De­cem­ber 8, 2021 is­sued by his agent, the Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer was du­ly no­ti­fied of my in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue the fi­nal count process.

He said that by let­ter dat­ed De­cem­ber 9, he re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence from the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer which con­firmed his re­quest and sched­uled this process for De­cem­ber 13, 2021, at 10 am.

“It is note­wor­thy that al­though this process had not been com­plet­ed on De­cem­ber 9, 2021, the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go had sworn in the PDP can­di­date Mr. Son­ny Craig as the mem­ber for the elec­toral dis­trict of Buc­coo/Mt. Pleas­ant,” he said.

Den­nis said now that the of­fi­cial busi­ness is out of the way, he could con­grat­u­late the win­ner Son­ny Craig.

Ac­cord­ing to the EBC, this is the fi­nal vote count:

PDP - 924

PNM - 920

IDA - 13

UTP - 6

Ri­car­do Phillips - 0