Richard?Lord

Head of the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group, Sir Paul Tovua, yes­ter­day called on all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, vot­ers and the me­dia to en­sure T&T main­tains its rep­u­ta­tion for hold­ing peace­ful and cred­i­ble elec­tions.He was speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. The group ar­rived in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day at the in­vi­ta­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and will mon­i­tor and re­port of Mon­day's poll.

He said T&T had a track record of "cred­i­ble elec­tions and the Com­mon­wealth is com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing its sup­port of the coun­try's de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es."He said the six-mem­ber group was sup­port­ed by four pro­fes­sion­al mem­bers of staff from the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at.

"We will as­sess whether the elec­tion has been con­duct­ed ac­cord­ing to the stan­dards for de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions to which Trinidad and To­ba­go has com­mit­ted it­self, in­clud­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work and na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion, as well as Com­mon­wealth and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments," he said, adding that the group "will be ob­jec­tive, in­de­pen­dent and im­par­tial."

The group has al­ready met with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, the po­lice, the main po­lit­i­cal par­ties–the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)–and in­tends to meet with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­ter­est groups, in­clud­ing a sep­a­rate team of ob­servers from Cari­com lat­er this week.

"The aim is to en­sure we gain a clear and com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing of the elec­tion process and the elec­toral en­vi­ron­ment," he added. He said to­mor­row, teams will be de­ployed to San Fer­nan­do, Ma­yaro, Port-of-Spain and To­ba­go to ob­serve the elec­tion en­vi­ron­ment and prepa­ra­tions for elec­tion day. He said on Mon­day the group will ob­serve the open­ing and clos­ing of the polls, the polling it­self, count­ing of votes and trans­mis­sion of re­sults.

Sir Paul said the group would is­sue an in­ter­im state­ment of key find­ings short­ly af­ter the elec­tion "and be­fore our de­par­ture on Sep­tem­ber 11 we will pre­pare our fi­nal re­port."He said the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er team stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of T&T as they ex­er­cise their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to vote for the lead­ers of their choice.

The del­e­ga­tion in­cludes the ed­i­tor-in-chief of the Search­light pub­li­ca­tion of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Clare Kaiz­er; for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al of the Ba­hamas, Al­fred Sears, QC; ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Democ­ra­cy Watch, Taleya Rehman, from Bangladesh; ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Com­mon­wealth Youth New Zealand, Aaron Hape; and elec­toral of­fi­cer, Mawethu Mosery, from South Africa.