Gail Alexan­der

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions are ahead and vot­ers will have two new seats in the Cou­va and Ma­yaro cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas and there will al­so be 22 bound­ary changes in six oth­er cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein spoke about the changes in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day while pi­lot­ing the tenth Re­port of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion for the pur­pos­es of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

“With the adop­tion of this re­port, the way will be cleared for an elec­tion and I en­cour­age those on the oth­er (Op­po­si­tion) side to sup­port it. We ex­pect that an elec­tion will be held, but not be­fore it’s due,” Ho­sein said.

Ho­sein, who pi­lot­ed the bill in the ab­sence of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi—who is over­seas, added, “We’ll hold the next Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion in a re­formed sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. We’ll hold the next elec­tion with the Bor­ough of Diego Mar­tin and the Bor­ough of Siparia, law­ful­ly in ex­is­tence.”

Ho­sein said T&T was di­vid­ed in­to 14 elec­toral ar­eas rep­re­sent­ed by the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions–two cities, three bor­oughs and nine re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

The 14 ar­eas in­volve 139 elec­toral dis­tricts. The num­ber of elec­toral dis­tricts in the five mu­nic­i­pal elec­toral ar­eas are Port-of-Spain (12), San Fer­nan­do (nine), Ari­ma (sev­en), Point Fortin (six) and Ch­agua­nas (eight).

He said these were fixed by law and can­not be changed.

Ho­sein added: “Changes rec­om­mend­ed by the EBC in­volve ad­just­ments to the bound­aries of 22 elec­toral dis­tricts across elec­toral ar­eas of Ch­agua­nas, Point Fortin, Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro, Pe­nal/Debe, Siparia and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro.”

“It al­so in­volves the cre­ation of two ad­di­tion­al elec­toral dis­tricts in the elec­toral ar­eas of Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro and changes to the names of five elec­toral dis­tricts with­in these elec­toral ar­eas,” he not­ed.

Ho­sein de­tailed the EBC’s rules and prin­ci­ples for the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the num­ber of elec­toral dis­tricts in a re­gion­al elec­toral area and which pro­duced the two new seats.

The seats are in Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro, known as Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia; and one in Ma­yaro/ Rio Claro, known as Ma­yaro North.

De­tail­ing a for­mu­la for elec­torate sizes in ar­eas, Ho­sein al­so said the EBC is re­quired to re­view the 139 elec­toral dis­tricts and, where nec­es­sary, pro­pose bound­ary changes to en­sure that a 25 per cent thresh­old is main­tained.

Al­ter­ations were rec­om­mend­ed for the 22 ar­eas: four bound­aries with­in the mu­nic­i­pal elec­toral area of Ch­agua­nas, two bound­aries with­in Point Fortin, eight bound­aries with­in the re­gion­al elec­toral area of Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro, four bound­aries with­in Ma­yaro/Rio Claro, two bound­aries with­in Siparia, two bound­aries with­in Pe­nal/Debe.

Ad­just­ments were made to the bound­aries of Char­lieville, Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our, En­ter­prise North/ Es­mer­al­da and Mon­trose.

Ad­just­ments were al­so made to the bound­aries of Egypt and New­lands/Ma­haica at Point Fortin.

With the ad­just­ments in Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro, Ho­sein de­tailed the fol­low­ing name changes in both ar­eas:

The Elec­toral dis­trict of Bal­main/Cal­cut­ta No. 2 has been re­named Cou­va East/Bal­main. Cal­i­for­nia/Point Lisas has been re­named Savonet­ta/Point Lisas.

The elec­toral dis­trict of Car­li Bay/Cal­cut­ta No. 3/Mc Bean has been re­named Cal­cut­ta No. 3/ Mc Bean.

The elec­toral dis­trict of Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare is re­named Ma­yaro South/Guayagua­yare and the elec­toral dis­trict of Rio Claro South/Cat’s Hill is re­named Rio Claro South.

Ho­sein said the Gov­ern­ment is “cham­pi­oning” cre­ation of the Diego Mar­tin and Siparia Bor­oughs to be done “short­ly” and the bor­oughs will be part of the EBC’s 11th re­port.

Ho­sein de­tailed the tenth Re­port’s his­to­ry af­ter be­ing sub­mit­ted by the EBC on June 10, 2021, sent to Cab­i­net in Ju­ly 2021 and the Par­lia­ment in Au­gust 2021. He said the State of Emer­gency and the pan­dem­ic re­sult­ed in it be­ing laid in Par­lia­ment on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2022.