Akash Sama­roo

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will not en­ter­tain the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s re­quest for in­ter­na­tion­al over servers to over­see the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

Dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ Mon­day Night Re­port, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the call for for­eign over­sight while un­der­scor­ing that her par­ty does not trust the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment with the process.

How­ev­er, while an­swer­ing ques­tions from the au­di­ence dur­ing Break­fast with the Prime Min­is­ter to­day at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Dr Row­ley re­spond­ed to her re­quest with a re­sound­ing no.

“We are go­ing in­to a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, we’ve had that over and over and over, and there’s one due in a few weeks. Some of our col­leagues are telling me, "I must in­vite for­eign­ers to come and ob­serve our lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, no!” the Prime Min­is­ter said to laugh­ter from the crowd which was made up of par­ty stal­warts and mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter ques­tioned why the Op­po­si­tion Leader be­lieves such an in­ter­ven­tion is nec­es­sary.

“They are free to come if they wish, it’s a free coun­try but why are we sell­ing our­selves short?”

Dr Row­ley said this coun­try has a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing “su­per­stars” with elec­tions and that is why lo­cals go to oth­er coun­tries to ob­serve their elec­toral process.