Over­shad­owed by the worst spike in COVID-19 cas­es since the start of the pan­dem­ic, vot­ing takes place to­mor­row for the sec­ond time this year to elect a new To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

The pan­dem­ic was present when To­bag­o­ni­ans went to the polls in Jan­u­ary, but the stakes are even high­er this time around, not on­ly be­cause of the po­lit­i­cal fac­tors which trig­gered this tie-break­er elec­tion, but due to the in­creased num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es on the is­land and the prospect of the new Omi­cron vari­ant lurk­ing out­side our shores.

That makes it even more chal­leng­ing to en­sure to­mor­row’s elec­tions are not on­ly free and fair but safe and it will be up to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to en­sure strin­gent en­force­ment of pub­lic health pro­to­cols at polling sta­tions.

How­ev­er, there are al­so crit­i­cal roles for the par­ties, can­di­dates and vot­ers.

Elec­tions are large-scale ex­er­cis­es that re­quire par­tic­i­pa­tion, trans­paren­cy and con­fi­dence to main­tain the high­est stan­dards of democ­ra­cy. 

To their cred­it, par­ties and can­di­dates have done most of their cam­paign­ing vir­tu­al­ly in ad­her­ence with pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions on crowd sizes and phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. They adapt­ed their cam­paigns to in­creas­ing­ly use so­cial me­dia plat­forms and kept in-per­son events such as walk­a­bouts to a min­i­mum.

A no­table ex­cep­tion was Nom­i­na­tion Day, when sup­port­ers from the PNM and the PDP de­scend­ed in droves at the of­fices of re­turn­ing of­fi­cers to sup­port can­di­dates. Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing rules were flout­ed and po­lice of­fi­cers had to fre­quent­ly re­mind overzeal­ous sup­port­ers about the health reg­u­la­tions.

But one of the biggest tests of the sys­tems put in place by the EBC will be to­mor­row, when el­i­gi­ble vot­ers cast their bal­lots. Al­though there was a pe­ri­od for spe­cial vot­ing be­fore elec­tion day, that was the on­ly avail­able al­ter­na­tive to in-per­son vot­ing.

COVID-19 has sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed the play­book for vot­ing, so even be­fore elec­tors de­cide on po­lit­i­cal par­ties and can­di­dates, they must de­ter­mine whether they can safe­ly par­tic­i­pate in the process. This is be­lieved to have con­tributed to low vot­er turnout for the Jan­u­ary polls, al­though vot­er ap­a­thy has for years been a chal­lenge in T&T elec­tions.

The biggest hur­dle in main­tain­ing safe­ty may come hours af­ter the close of polls. Once re­sults start com­ing in and the re­sults be­gin trend­ing to­ward a par­tic­u­lar par­ty, sup­port­ers may start con­verg­ing at cam­paign of­fices and in the streets.

Car­ni­val-style post-elec­tion cel­e­bra­tions com­plete with mu­sic and rev­el­ry, a unique fea­ture of pol­i­tics in T&T, are po­ten­tial su­per-spread­er events. Par­ties will have to step up and main­tain con­trol over their sup­port­ers at these ex­pect­ed elec­tion night gath­er­ings. Oth­er­wise, weeks from now the new THA could find it­self deal­ing with a pub­lic health cri­sis even worse than the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion when dai­ly new cas­es are at triple-dig­it lev­els.

To­ba­go’s tourism-de­pen­dent econ­o­my, al­ready hard hit by the lock­downs and trav­el re­stric­tions due to COVID, can­not af­ford such an oc­cur­rence.

Af­ter months of dead­lock that de­prived To­bag­o­ni­ans of a ful­ly func­tion­al THA, what is need­ed over the next few days is ma­ture re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour. El­i­gi­ble elec­tors are urged to ex­er­cise their civic du­ty and choose the As­sem­bly rep­re­sen­ta­tives they be­lieve are best suit­ed to take the is­land for­ward.

But they must do so in a way that keeps COVID-19 at bay.