Derek Achong

Lawyers for the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion say the or­gan­i­sa­tion had no choice but to ex­tend last year's gen­er­al elec­tion by one hour.

So said EBC lawyer, Rus­sell Mar­tineau, SC, as he con­tin­ued to make sub­mis­sions in the tri­al of elec­tion pe­ti­tions filed by the Op­po­si­tion UNC, which is claim­ing that the EBC act­ed il­le­gal­ly in ex­tend­ing the poll on Sep­tem­ber 7 last year.

Cit­ing re­ports from the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Of­fice on that day as well as mul­ti­ple cor­re­spon­dence from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both po­lit­i­cal par­ties, who com­plained of dif­fi­cul­ties due to heavy rain and sub­se­quent flash flood­ing acrosss Trinidad, Mar­tineau said his client need­ed to take a de­ci­sion to en­sure that cit­i­zens were able to ex­er­cise their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right.

"It had a du­ty to act and if it didn't then peo­ple would have been dis­fran­chised," Mar­tineau said.

Re­spond­ing to claims from the UNC that the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act does not give the EBC the pow­er to al­ter the hours of polling, with is with­in the re­mit of Cab­i­net and the Pres­i­dent, Mar­tineau stat­ed that the leg­is­la­tion did not deal specif­i­cal­ly with the is­sue of ex­tend­ing the polls but give the EBC "far reach­ing" pow­ers to man­age the con­duct of elec­tions in T&T.

"It would be ab­surd to say that they act­ed in breach of the law, be­cause they were re­spond­ing to a very se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion, which was not con­tem­plat­ed be­fore," Mar­tineau said.

Asked by pre­sid­ing judge Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er to ex­plain why the ex­ten­sion was not ex­tend­ed to vot­ers in To­ba­go, Mar­tineau claimed that the EBC re­ceived no com­plaints of ad­verse weath­er con­di­tion there.

Deal­ing with the is­sue raised by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) over the UNC's abil­i­ty to prove that the elec­tion re­sult ma­te­ri­al­ly was ma­te­ri­al­ly af­fect­ed by the ex­ten­sion, Mar­tineau said he sup­port­ed the PNM's sub­mis­sions on the is­sue ful­ly.

Ear­li­er this week, head of the PNM's le­gal team, Dou­glas Mendes, SC, not­ed that if the votes cast af­ter 6 pm, re­gard­less of the can­di­date cho­sen, were to be sub­tract­ed from the votes ob­tained by PNM can­di­dates, they (the PNM can­di­dates) would have still been suc­cess­ful.

The UNC ini­tial­ly filed pe­ti­tions for six mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies–La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, To­co/ San­gre Grande, Tu­na­puna, St Joseph, San Fer­nan­do West and Moru­ga/Table­land.

In March, how­ev­er, the pe­ti­tion for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro was struck out by Dean-Ar­mor­er due to an ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror by the UNC in fil­ing it. Be­sides the pe­ti­tions, Dean-Ar­mor­er has al­so been as­signed two cas­es in which three pri­vate cit­i­zens are chal­leng­ing the EBC's de­ci­sion.

So­cial ac­tivist, Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj, has filed a ju­di­cial re­view seek­ing the court's clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the EBC had the con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er to make the de­ci­sion and Ir­win Lyne and Melis­sa Syl­van are claim­ing that the EBC breached the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of To­bag­o­ni­ans by not al­low­ing them an ex­ten­sion.

Both cas­es have been de­ferred as they would be di­rect­ly af­fect­ed by the out­come of Dean-Ar­mor­er's de­ci­sion on the pe­ti­tions. Mar­tineau is ex­pect­ed to com­plete his sub­mis­sions next Mon­day. Dean-Ar­mor­er had promised to de­liv­er her judg­ment in the case in Au­gust.