The Chief of Mis­sion of the Cari­com ob­serv­er team in Trinidad and To­ba­go for the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Ian Hugh­es says the team does not an­tic­i­pate any ma­jor vi­o­lence or oth­er sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tions on Mon­day.

The team of eight ob­servers and four ac­com­pa­ny­ing mem­bers of the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at met with the me­dia yes­ter­day, as part of a se­ries of stake­hold­er meet­ings since they be­gan their mis­sion on Mon­day.

Hugh­es said they al­so met this week with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance, the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce and the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties.

They al­so paid a cour­tesy call on Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and in­tend to meet with the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion and Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al ahead of the elec­tion.

Hugh­es said that based on past elec­tions in T&T and the Caribbean, there is lit­tle to sug­gest that Mon­day’s poll would have a se­ri­ous neg­a­tive out­come.

“Cari­com would have ob­served (T&T gen­er­al elec­tions) in 2015, 2010, 2007...so we have the in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge. We have found that in the Caribbean elec­tions have al­ways been fair­ly free and peace­ful. At the end of the day, we have to live here and from that per­spec­tive, we don’t an­tic­i­pate any vi­o­lence or any­thing of the sort,” he said.

Hugh­es said they left the meet­ings feel­ing con­fi­dent that every­one wants to see T&T move on peace­ful­ly af­ter the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“We are con­fi­dent that all par­ties trust the work of the com­mit­tee. What we have al­so heard is that Trinidad and To­ba­go, be­ing a melt­ing pot as it were, ‘we all live here’. You have var­i­ous fes­ti­vals and hol­i­days and ac­tiv­i­ties and at the end of the day you cel­e­brate every­thing with every­one, and so it is ex­pect­ed, that at the end of the elec­tions on Mon­day, yes, you will have those who are smil­ing or grin­ning from ear to ear, you’re go­ing to have those who are sad, but at the end of the day it’s about the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We did leave those meet­ings, in­clud­ing the meet­ings with civ­il so­ci­ety, with that sense of there will be that one­ness, that to­geth­er­ness,” he said.

Hugh­es said the team has been watch­ing cam­paign meet­ings on tele­vi­sion but will at­tend the UNC and PNM ral­lies at the Aranguez and Ed­die Hart sa­van­nahs re­spec­tive­ly, on Sat­ur­day. “We want to get a feel of things,” Hugh­es said. On Mon­day he said the team in­tends to vis­it as many con­stituen­cies as pos­si­ble and was asked by the par­ties to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to the mar­gin­als.

“Our aim is to at least vis­it, 25, 35 per cent,” he said, adding, “We know that there are in ex­cess of 2,000 (polling sta­tions). We need to get a sam­ple. As we said, on our way to the mar­gin­als we will try to vis­it oth­er polling sta­tions as well.” Among the ar­eas they are hop­ing to vis­it are polling di­vi­sions with­in the To­ba­go East con­stituen­cy.

Hugh­es made it clear that their man­date is to ob­serve and re­port, but not to in­ter­fere with the elec­tion process.

“We will ask ques­tions but we will not be in­tru­sive,” he as­sured.

He said from their meet­ings so far they have al­ready been giv­en in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments to pe­ruse, in­clud­ing a dossier of com­plaints against the EBC by the UNC.

“We are go­ing through the dossier and once we com­plete it, hope­ful­ly it will al­so be re­port­ed on (in the fi­nal re­port),” Hugh­es said. Hugh­es said the team’s vis­it was com­plete­ly fund­ed by the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and not the T&T Gov­ern­ment.

He said the po­lice as­sured them they would be al­lowed to car­ry out their work safe­ly.

Asked whether they had the au­thor­i­ty to in­ter­vene in cas­es where they ob­served ar­eas of con­cern, Hugh­es said that while they can­not in­ter­fere, noth­ing is stop­ping them from call­ing the EBC and re­port­ing is­sues.

He not­ed that while a Com­mon­wealth team is al­so ob­serv­ing the elec­tions, both mis­sions will be op­er­at­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er.

The Cari­com team is ex­pect­ed to sub­mit a fi­nal re­port with­in a month af­ter the elec­tion but will meet with the me­dia next Tues­day to dis­cuss pre­lim­i­nary find­ings. A to­tal of 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties and 161 can­di­dates will be con­test­ing Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion for 41 par­lia­men­tary seats.

The PNM is the on­ly par­ty con­test­ing all 41 seats, fol­lowed by the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front with 37 can­di­dates, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress with 34 and the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance with 17.