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Thursday, July 24, 2025

UNC takes election complaints to the police

by

Raphael John Lall
1803 days ago
20200815
UNC candidate for St Joseph Ahloy Hunt displays a statement of the poll during a press conference at UNC’s Tunapuna office yesterday.

UNC candidate for St Joseph Ahloy Hunt displays a statement of the poll during a press conference at UNC’s Tunapuna office yesterday.

Anisto Alves

Raphael John-Lall

Dave Tan­coo, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) claimed yes­ter­day that the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) had not pro­vid­ed doc­u­ments to the par­ty which would help in en­sur­ing the re­count of votes in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies is done ac­cu­rate­ly.

Fol­low­ing an ini­tial re­sult that saw the UNC los­ing the elec­tions, the par­ty asked re­counts in five con­stituen­cies—San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, and To­co/San­gre Grande.

At a news con­fer­ence at the par­ty’s Tun­puna of­fice, Tan­coo said: “What we asked for is ac­cess to the sta­tion di­aries, the spec­i­men sig­na­tures, ac­cess to the poll cards, those things will as­set in en­sur­ing the process is trans­par­ent­ly re­viewed. There is no rea­son for the EBC to ob­ject to any­thing that we are ask­ing for once it will help the trans­paren­cy and the process to be val­i­dat­ed. It is strange that they are fight­ing this down.”

He al­so claimed that they have not seen cor­re­spon­dence from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley stat­ing that he com­mu­ni­cat­ed with in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies ask­ing for in­ter­na­tion­al elec­tion ob­servers at the Au­gust 10 elec­tion.

Ahloy Hunt, who con­test­ed the St Joseph seat, said too many ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties tak­ing place in the count in St Joseph.

“We found last night a bal­lot box which was im­prop­er­ly sealed. The bal­lot box is sup­posed to have seals to the front and the side to en­sure that if any­one opens the bal­lot box, you will break those seals. An­oth­er bal­lot box yes­ter­day evening had no prop­er seals on them and each en­ve­lope com­ing out of the bal­lot box would have a white seal with the sig­na­tures of all the per­sons from the polling sta­tion. None of the en­velopes had those seals on it,” he said

Hunt said a re­port was made to the Tu­na­puna po­lice sta­tion on Fri­day night and the mat­ters raised by the par­ty are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

David Nakhid, the UNC’s Tu­na­puna can­di­date, al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in that con­stituen­cy and de­scribed them as “alarm­ing.”

“We re­quest­ed to have a spec­i­men sig­na­ture present and none was pro­vid­ed so we have noth­ing to com­pare to the sig­na­tures on the bal­lot. This is for me un­be­liev­able. We asked to see di­aries so that we can have an ac­count for peo­ple who vot­ed, pos­si­bly with­out ID cards, and we were told that those di­aries will not be made avail­able,” he said.

Nakhid said 25 bal­lot box­es were count­ed with­out UNC rep­re­sen­ta­tives present in the days af­ter the elec­tion and the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer set a sched­ule for bal­lots to be re­count­ed from 9 am to 5 pm which they ad­hered to on Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day.

On Wednes­day, the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer said they would go be­yond 5 pm and they count­ed four box­es in the UNC’s ab­sence, he claimed. On Thurs­day, they went over­time from 6 pm to 11 pm with­out the UNC’s pres­ence and count­ed five box­es.

On Fri­day they al­so went be­yond the al­lot­ted time with­out the UNC’s pres­ence and count­ed 16 box­es.

“So they count­ed 25 box­es in what is sup­posed to be a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process with­out us be­ing present. It is not pos­si­ble to count 16 box­es from 6 pm to 11 pm. That is high­ly sus­pi­cious. I ques­tion the mo­tive of the EBC. The EBC must have an im­par­tial out­look,” Nakhid said.

He al­so ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley of in­cit­ing the racial di­vide.

La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro can­di­date Jear­lean John al­so al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the re­count in that con­stituen­cy.

UNC Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Ani­ta Haynes, said the re­counts are a vi­tal part of T&T’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. She did not say what the par­ty’s next step will be if they are still un­hap­py with the re­count­ing process.


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