Shal­iza Has­sanali

The Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) will spend $23 mil­lion in prepa­ra­tion for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. This will be $5 mil­lion more than what the EBC spent for the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion. The dis­clo­sure was made by deputy chief elec­tions of­fi­cer Ver­sil Charles-Wright on Fri­day.�Speak­ing at the EBC's head of­fice in Port-of-Spain, Charles-Wright said the largest slice of the mon­ey would go to­wards train­ing of 12,000 elec­tion of­fi­cers, hir­ing of 41 re­turn­ing of­fi­cers, pur­chas­ing of 50 kegs of elec­toral ink and for ad­ver­tise­ments. Train­ing of the elec­tion of­fi­cers will be un­der­tak­en for four days start­ing from Fri­day, while the Writ of Elec­tion will be hand­ed to its 41 re­turn­ing of­fi­cers by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards very soon. The most chal­leng­ing task for the EBC, Charles-Wright said, would be train­ing of its elec­tion of­fi­cers. "You have to en­sure that the peo­ple you put on board to con­duct this elec­tion must have in­tegri­ty, hon­esty and fair­ness."

If the of­fi­cers do not have these qual­i­ties Charles-Wright said "that will be a recipe for dis­as­ter." She al­so warned that any­one caught favour­ing any of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties will be dis­missed.�"This is the seat of democ­ra­cy here and we can­not play with that." Charles-Wright ad­mit­ted the EBC was tak­en by sur­prise when Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning at the PNM's spe­cial con­ven­tion in Ch­aguara­mas on March 27 warned that a gen­er­al elec­tion was im­mi­nent. "We were ready­ing our­selves for a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion," she said. "We were not look­ing for it now, any­way. We were await­ing for the draft con­sti­tu­tion to be fi­nalised for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. We were about to em­bark on a ver­i­fi­ca­tion field ex­er­cise. So now we have to ready our­selves for a gen­er­al elec­tion."

Staff work­ing ex­tra hours

All EBC staffers have been asked to work ad­di­tion­al hours. Charles-Wright ex­plained there were things the EBC could not do be­fore the date was called. From to­mor­row, 35 days be­fore 1,037,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers go to the 2,046 polling sta­tions across T&T, Charles-Wright as­sured that "the EBC would have every­thing in place."�In the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion ap­prox­i­mate­ly 990,467 peo­ple were el­i­gi­ble to vote. Of that fig­ure on­ly 655,828 ex­er­cised their fran­chise. With the high­est list of reg­is­tered vot­ers in the his­to­ry of T&T, Charles-Wright said the EBC was ex­pect­ing the largest vot­er turnout at the polls. From as ear­ly as 7am peo­ple start swarm­ing the EBC's head­quar­ters to en­sure that their names get on the vot­ers' list. "I want to feel that apart from the change of ad­dress cam­paign this elec­tion will be big." For the past two weeks the EBC has been urg­ing cit­i­zens to reg­u­larise their reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus. Cit­i­zens who have re­port­ed a change of ad­dress to the EBC, Charles-Wright said, would be checked out to en­sure that the in­for­ma­tion sup­plied was cor­rect.

"There is a process that we fol­low. Once this is done every­thing will be smooth sail­ing." Charles-Wright said for every gen­er­al elec­tion the is­sue of vote padding in mar­gin­al seats resur­faced by Op­po­si­tion par­ties. "That is the fear out there. All this could be avoid­ed if peo­ple in­form us of their new ad­dress. So we put you where you are sup­posed to vote to avoid any talk." One of the re­stric­tions that the EBC im­posed in the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion was the ban­ning of cell­phones at polling sta­tions, af­ter re­ports sur­faced that peo­ple who owned cam­era cell­phones would take pho­tographs in­side the vot­ing booth be­fore cast­ing their bal­lots to show which par­ty they had vot­ed for. Charles-Wright said this was one mat­ter the EBC would have to dis­cuss with act­ing CoP James Philbert to en­sure that vot­ers con­form to the rules.