In the midst of an im­pend­ing storm and es­ca­lat­ing cas­es of COVID-19, the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion on Friday con­tin­ued its prepa­ra­tion for elec­tions.

There won’t be any Com­mon­wealth ob­servers com­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Au­gust 10 – but there's the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Cari­com ob­servers, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed on Fri­day night.

Gov­ern­ment had just been con­sid­er­ing rolling back re­stric­tions on the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor when the lat­est COVID-19 cas­es arose, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Fri­day night.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has promised to ad­vise the pop­u­la­tion about the sta­tus of the ob­servers in­vit­ed to over­see the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion process soon.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has again knocked Gov­ern­ment over its han­dling of repa­tri­at­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens strand­ed abroad by the lock­down of the bor­ders due to COVID-19, liken­ing this treat­ment to slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

Fraud Squad de­tec­tives have re­opened their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions that Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for To­co/San­gre Grande Roger Mon­roe al­leged­ly used an ex­pired pow­er of at­tor­ney to with­draw mon­ey from his grand­fa­ther Per­cy Thomas’ ac­count two days af­ter he (Thomas) died on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2015.

Pow­ers of ar­rest for armed forces and manda­to­ry poly­graph tests for all of­fi­cers are part of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) crime-fight­ing plans.

Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­tailed how the UNC gov­ern­ment will fund some of their plans for the coun­try.

There is no “ex­piry date” on fraud mat­ters, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has point­ed out, par­tic­u­lar­ly to ILP leader Jack Warn­er.

Ari­ma May­or and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for D’Abadie/O’Meara Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian is deny­ing that her so­cial me­dia post about peo­ple steal­ing man­hole cov­ers to make “tawahs” was racist.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the on­ly way in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to on­go­ing fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tions at state en­ti­ties will be con­clud­ed is if the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is kept out of gov­ern­ment.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is propos­ing a wage sub­sidy as a means to re­in­force the work­force that has been af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.