Richard Lord

T&T will go to the polls to elect a new Gov­ern­ment in 38 days, on Mon­day May 24, 2010. This, as Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's of­fice is­sued a two-para­graph re­lease an­nounc­ing the elec­tion date short­ly af­ter noon yes­ter­day. It is be­ing held more than two years ear­li­er than it was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in 2012. The last time Man­ning called an ear­ly elec­tion, in 1995, the PNM lost the Gov­ern­ment to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, then led by Bas­deo Pan­day. Yes­ter­day's an­nounce­ment end­ed wide­spread spec­u­la­tion about, and in­creas­ing calls for, the 2010 elec­tion date. "Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to­day ad­vised Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards to is­sue a writ of elec­tion, ap­point­ing Mon­day 24, May 2010 as the date of the gen­er­al elec­tion. Nom­i­na­tion Day is Mon­day 3, May 2010," the re­lease said. It added: "On April 8, 2010, Patrick Man­ning, Prime Min­is­ter, ad­vised His Ex­cel­len­cy George Maxwell Richards, Pres­i­dent, to dis­solve Par­lia­ment in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 68 of the Con­sti­tu­tion."

On pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions the elec­tion date was an­nounced in Par­lia­ment, a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence or at a par­ty fo­rum. It was an un­prece­dent­ed de­vel­op­ment, as sources said it was the first time in the T&T's his­to­ry an elec­tion date was an­nounced more than a week af­ter the Par­lia­ment was dis­solved. Many were ex­pect­ing Man­ning (as he did in pre­vi­ous years) to pull the date out of his back pock­et. Man­ning's PNM won 26 of the 41 seats in the last gen­er­al elec­tion on No­vem­ber 5, 2007. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), un­der for­mer leader Bas­deo Pan­day, won the re­main­ing 15 seats. Man­ning said ear­li­er in the week he de­cid­ed to keep the date to him­self be­cause in 1995 when a date for the then snap elec­tion was de­cid­ed, it was leaked to UNC of­fi­cials. Man­ning said that breach re­sult­ed in the UNC be­ing bet­ter pre­pared. Mean­while, the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), which is charged with the con­duct of the polls, said it was ready for the elec­tion.

Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Howard Cayenne said more than one mil­lion cit­i­zens have been reg­is­tered to vote. He said the pe­ri­od of vot­er reg­is­tra­tion runs un­til next Tues­day. The EBC is­sued a re­lease short­ly af­ter the elec­tion date was an­nounced call­ing for peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in work­ing for the elec­tion to ap­ply. It said it want­ed pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers, deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers, poll clerks and in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cers. The EBC said suc­cess­ful ap­pli­cants would be em­ployed on the ba­sis of sat­is­fac­to­ry at­ten­dance and suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the train­ing pro­gramme. Man­ning pre­vi­ous­ly said he called the ear­ly polls to avert a move by Per­sad-Bisses­sar to de­bate in Par­lia­ment last week Fri­day a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in him. Man­ning said he was in­formed that many slan­der­ous re­marks were ex­pect­ed to be made un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege.