Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Come rain or hail, the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) will not be ex­tend­ing the hours for vot­ing in to­mor­row’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

That was made clear yes­ter­day by Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope dur­ing a sit-down in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia ahead of the elec­tion.

Thun­der­storms as­so­ci­at­ed with the In­ter-Trop­i­cal Con­ver­gence Zone af­fect­ed parts of Trinidad on Fri­day night re­sult­ing in flood­ing around the coun­try. The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el ad­verse weath­er alert yes­ter­day as a re­sult.

De­spite the ad­verse weath­er, how­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the EBC’s head of­fice on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing it was buzzing with ac­tiv­i­ty.

In the last gen­er­al elec­tion, the EBC came un­der fire for ex­tend­ing the vot­ing time by one hour, be­cause of in­clement weath­er. The par­ty chal­lenged the de­ci­sion in the High Court.

“We were in court for near­ly a year. The court said though well-in­ten­tioned we did not have the dis­cre­tion to ex­tend the time be­yond 6 pm so that will not be hap­pen­ing again. Come rain or hail that will not be hap­pen­ing again,” Nar­cis-Scope said.

“We will just have to pray for good weath­er on the day and we say God is a Tri­ni so on the 10th we will need his help.”

Nar­cis-Scope said where fea­si­ble the EBC will en­sure tents are placed at polling sta­tions to pro­vide shel­ter. This is one of sev­er­al ad­di­tion­al costs that the EBC has had to un­der­take in this year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

Nor­mal­ly a gen­er­al elec­tion costs up­ward of $40 mil­lion, but this year it will be much more ex­pen­sive, she said.

“This is go­ing to be a cost­ly elec­tion. When we sub­mit­ted our es­ti­mates for the mid-year re­view we con­tem­plat­ed of course whether we would have an elec­tion in this fis­cal.

“So we asked for $50 mil­lion, we got $43 mil­lion so we al­ready start­ed not with what we had av­er­aged and of course when we sub­mit­ted the mid-year re­view we did not con­tem­plate COVID,” she said.

“So those fig­ures did not con­tem­plate COVID-19 so we have some jug­gling to do in terms of the fi­nances and this elec­tion has proven to be ex­ceed­ing­ly cost­ly,” Nar­cis-Scope said.

One of the ad­di­tion­al cost for this gen­er­al elec­tion is the em­ploy­ment of 2,210 polling day staff to dis­pense sani­tis­er at polling sta­tions around the coun­try.

In ad­di­tion to that, the EBC paid for in­creased train­ing for staff and pur­chased face masks, ad­di­tion­al stamps and hand sani­tis­er.

In some cas­es, larg­er venues for polling sta­tions had to be ac­quired be­cause of COVID-19.

Nar­cis-Scope could not say whether vot­er turnout will be af­fect­ed be­cause of the resur­gence of COVID in T&T but as­sured that the EBC has mea­sures in place.

“Wear­ing a mask has not been leg­is­lat­ed and we can­not de­ny a per­son their fran­chise if they are not wear­ing a mask. If you’re cough­ing and sneez­ing, we can­not de­ny you your right, be­cause you have a con­sti­tu­tion­al right to ex­er­cise your fran­chise, so what I would say to any­one is to safe­guard your­self be­cause there could be a per­son who might be ill. You en­sure that you com­ply with the guide­lines as we have put them out and once you do that you will be safe,” she said.

“I re­al­ly do not know how the elec­torate feels but what I could give them is every as­sur­ance that we are do­ing all that we are sup­posed to en­sure that they are safe. Once you main­tain that phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing in the line, you wear a mask and you sani­tise you will be okay but I am hop­ing that the elec­torate is com­fort­ed by the ef­forts of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion and that peo­ple will come out and ex­er­cise their fran­chise.

“But I think that po­lit­i­cal par­ties have a role to play in terms of sooth­ing the fears of their sup­port­ers. They are in more di­rect con­tact with the elec­torate in a more fa­mil­iar man­ner walk­ing through the com­mu­ni­ties in a way that we are not so they have that di­rect re­la­tion­ship with the com­mu­ni­ties and it is up to them as our part­ners as well to send the same mes­sage that every ef­fort is be­ing made and they know that every ef­fort is be­ing made be­cause they have met with us and any con­cern that they have raised we have tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in our arrange­ments,” she said.

Nar­cis-Scope said re­turn­ing of­fi­cers are al­so be­ing pro­tect­ed.

“The vast ma­jor­i­ty of the re­turn­ing of­fi­cers fall with­in that vul­ner­a­ble group, they are all ma­ture in­di­vid­u­als so I said to them from the out­set that they could not af­ford to get COVID-19 so we have been stead­fast in pro­tect­ing them. We’ve pro­vid­ed them from the very in­cep­tion with all the req­ui­site PPE and clean­ing sup­plies and told them that they have to en­sure that they are safe be­cause they have to run this thing,” she said. 

Nar­cis-Scope lament­ed the fact that there will not be any elec­tion ob­servers present.

“We do not have in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers which is some­what of a dis­ap­point­ment,” she said.

“I was look­ing for­ward to meet­ing col­leagues in elec­tion man­age­ment and get­ting that stamp of ap­proval in terms of how we would have con­duct­ed this elec­tion and al­so any rec­om­men­da­tions mov­ing for­ward,” Nar­cis-Scope said.

“What is of great val­ue to us is the rec­om­men­da­tions that come out of those re­ports be­cause that is where you see how you can im­prove your process­es for the next elec­tion. So the feed­back, there­fore, will have to come from the me­dia, from the elec­torate and from the po­lit­i­cal par­ties this time. I look for­ward to that,” she said.

Nar­cis-Scope was among the elec­tion ob­servers who vis­it­ed to Guyana for their elec­tion in March. The of­fi­cial re­sults for that elec­tion were on­ly giv­en last week when Ir­faan Ali was named pres­i­dent. She said a sim­i­lar de­lay will not hap­pen here.

“We have a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent sys­tem. Our pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers are re­spon­si­ble for the count and they take their state­ment of the poll to the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer and all he or she is go­ing to do is ap­ply the num­bers as put on that state­ment of the poll.

“We have a very trans­par­ent sys­tem in that we have polling agents, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all the par­ties, who will have wit­nessed the count, signed that state­ment of the poll.

“Every­body who is present in the polling sta­tion at the time of the count will get one so you’re get­ting what es­sen­tial­ly are six or so orig­i­nals be­cause every­body signs that so the par­ty knows what the fi­nal fig­ures are for that box so there is a trans­paren­cy in the process by virtue of hav­ing the polling agents,” she ex­plained.

“So we are all on the same page in terms of what hap­pened in this par­tic­u­lar polling sta­tion and that will be true for the 2210 of them.

“So the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer just re­al­ly has to do some math, add up all those fig­ures to de­ter­mine who is the suc­cess­ful can­di­date and at the of­fice of the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer while that is hap­pen­ing you would have the agents in that of­fice see­ing what is hap­pen­ing,.

“So I don’t an­tic­i­pate any prob­lems all the per­sons we have se­lect­ed to work as re­turn­ing of­fi­cers have the ex­pe­ri­ence, they have done it be­fore, this is not their first rodeo so I don’t an­tic­i­pate any is­sues in that re­gard.”

Nar­cis-Scope said elec­tions are a com­pe­ti­tion. There is a win­ner and there are go­ing to be losers. How­ev­er, she an­tic­i­pates lit­i­ga­tion once re­sults are an­nounced since that has be­come the or­der of the day in elec­tions through­out the re­gion.

She said there are in­di­ca­tions of lit­i­ga­tion with re­spect to Bar­ry Padarath’s nom­i­na­tion for the Princes Town con­stituen­cy.

She rub­bished claims that Venezue­lan na­tion­als are be­ing al­lowed in­to the coun­try to vote.

Nacis-Scope cit­ed Sec­tion 13 of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act where there are stip­u­lat­ed guide­lines as to who can be al­lowed to vote.

“Any per­son that you see that could be Venezue­lan that is reg­is­tered to vote could on­ly be be­cause that per­son is a dual cit­i­zen,” she said.