UNC concerned over reports of irregularities during voting

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Leader of the Op­po­si­tion the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is ex­press­ing con­cern over sev­er­al re­ports of in­ci­dents and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties dur­ing vot­ing in to­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion.

The UNC Leader is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment a short while ago:

We ran a cam­paign we can be proud of, one which al­lowed us to meet hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple across this coun­try. I told every mem­ber of the UNC to go out in every com­mu­ni­ty and show that we will re­turn good rep­re­sen­ta­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The feed­back we have been get­ting is that in most ar­eas there is a steady stream of vot­ers, which is a pos­i­tive sign that peo­ple are in­ter­est­ed in ex­er­cis­ing their right to vote and to elect the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of their choice.

We are con­fi­dent that the peo­ple will make the right choice in this elec­tion and send a clear mes­sage to the PNM that their in­com­pe­tence is not ac­cept­able, and they are ready for change. I have al­ways said the voice of the peo­ple is the voice of God.

How­ev­er, the par­ty is alarmed over re­ports of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and is­sues with the vot­ing process.

We have had sev­er­al ex­am­ples in which it seems that the EBC of­fi­cials have not been con­sis­tent in their ap­pli­ca­tion of the law: while over 130 re­turn­ing of­fi­cers al­lowed per­sons wear­ing sim­i­lar coloured green t-shirts to ac­cess the polling sta­tion as Polling Agents, in at least two sep­a­rate re­port­ed in­stances, the UNC’s polling agents were pro­hib­it­ed be­cause the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer felt that the green colour was too close to yel­low (in one elec­toral dis­trict in SGRC and in an­oth­er in DM­RC). Our at­tor­neys and co­or­di­na­tors were forced to step in to re­solve the mat­ter.

There are mul­ti­ple in­stances in which polling agents sched­uled to work to­day at Poll Sta­tions were re­port­ed­ly ap­proached by per­sons rep­re­sent­ing an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty and of­fered in­duce­ments to stand down. How­ev­er, I am pleased to ad­vise that our polling agents re­main com­mit­ted and have turned out to work to­day.

I am al­so aware that an­oth­er par­ty is us­ing ve­hi­cles to trans­port per­son­nel in the Bor­oughs and Cities which have EBC stick­ers is­sued by the po­lice. Our lawyers have ad­vised that this is not in keep­ing with the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act which, at the third sched­ule ad­vis­es the re­gion­al mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and the ra­tio of cars per­mis­si­ble.

We al­so have re­ports of a PNM can­di­date block­ing vot­ers from ex­er­cis­ing their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rights and this has been re­port­ed to the po­lice.

This is cause for alarm, and we will mon­i­tor close­ly.

This cam­paign has been fraught with is­sues, and the PNM has used every tac­tic to try to de­flect at­ten­tion from their own in­abil­i­ty to gov­ern our coun­try.

Af­ter four years - now in­to their fifth year - they have not a sin­gle achieve­ment to speak about.

The UNC re­mains fo­cused on meet­ing cit­i­zens, hear­ing their con­cerns, and de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions. When the gen­er­al elec­tion is called, the peo­ple will be able to choose a leader and team that has a vi­sion and plan to move our coun­try for­ward.

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