JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Caricom observers hold talks with UNC, NTA, and EBC

by

KAY-MARIE FLETCHER
14 days ago
20250423
Caricom Chief of Mission Ian Hughes, left, Deputy Chief of Missions Dora James, second from left, and other Caricom Secretariat members greet UNC officials, including Wade Mark, general secretary Peter Kanhai, election data specialist Vijay Gosyne, PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo and attorney Darrell Allahar at the Office of the Opposition Leader on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

Caricom Chief of Mission Ian Hughes, left, Deputy Chief of Missions Dora James, second from left, and other Caricom Secretariat members greet UNC officials, including Wade Mark, general secretary Peter Kanhai, election data specialist Vijay Gosyne, PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo and attorney Darrell Allahar at the Office of the Opposition Leader on Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er

@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is sat­is­fied with the team of Cari­com ob­servers that will over­see Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the par­ty raised con­cerns about the Cari­com team’s in­tegri­ty and its re­la­tion­ship with the Gov­ern­ment, point­ing to a con­flict of in­ter­est. Ac­cord­ing to the par­ty, the wife of for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour serves as the as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Cari­com.

A six-mem­ber Cari­com con­tin­gent, led by Chief of Mis­sion Ian Hugh­es, ar­rived in the coun­try on Mon­day. Their first or­der of busi­ness in­clud­ed meet­ings with po­lit­i­cal par­ties such as the UNC and Gary Grif­fith’s Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), as well as the EBC.

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the 90-minute closed-door meet­ing, UNC’s at­tor­ney Dar­rell P Al­la­har shared the par­ty’s two main con­cerns: a lack of con­fi­dence in the EBC’s readi­ness for the up­com­ing elec­tion and the lim­it­ed pub­lic ac­cess to re­ports from Cari­com ob­servers in pre­vi­ous elec­tions.

Al­la­har said, “So far, we’re quite hap­py with the meet­ing that we had with the six pro­fes­sion­als. Some of them are ac­tu­al­ly chief elec­tion of­fi­cials in their own coun­tries, so they seem to know what they’re do­ing. They want­ed to find out from us our views on cer­tain things, which we gave to them, and they will do that with every­body.”

Hugh­es al­so told Guardian Me­dia he doesn’t be­lieve there is any bad blood over UNC’s past crit­i­cism and said the par­ty nev­er even brought up the mat­ter of Ar­mour’s wife with them.

Hugh­es said, “It went well. I thought it was frank, open dis­cus­sion and we look for­ward to go­ing to some of the po­lit­i­cal ral­lies and con­tin­u­ing our work here as ob­servers ... This is elec­tion. There are some things that are said dur­ing an elec­tion cy­cle, and we, as in­de­pen­dent ob­servers, are mind­ful of the fact that it is an elec­tion cy­cle; cer­tain things are go­ing to be said whether true or not, and we just con­tin­ue to do our work.

“With­in fam­i­lies, peo­ple would have their chal­lenges, their is­sues, and as ma­ture per­sons, you sit and you dis­cuss and you come to an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion, dis­cus­sions, and that’s re­al­ly what we had this morn­ing–open, free, fair–and I could un­der­stand why they would have made some of the re­marks they would have made in the pub­lic .”

Re­gard­ing UNC’s con­cerns about the ob­servers’ re­ports, Hugh­es said the re­ports are avail­able and will be made ac­ces­si­ble to all stake­hold­ers.

He said more of­fi­cials from the ob­servers’ team are ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in the coun­try soon.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, EBC al­so shared that it met with the Cari­com ob­servers’ team.

Ac­cord­ing to EBC, the meet­ing was “con­struc­tive, fos­ter­ing mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing and re­in­forc­ing a shared com­mit­ment to trans­par­ent and cred­i­ble elec­toral process­es. The di­a­logue was marked by open­ness, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and a shared goal of en­sur­ing free, fair, and peace­ful elec­tions.”
It said, “Dis­cus­sions were main­ly fo­cused on the com­mis­sion’s com­pre­hen­sive prepa­ra­tions for the up­com­ing elec­tions, in­clud­ing ini­tia­tives in vot­er ed­u­ca­tion, the train­ing and se­lec­tion cri­te­ria for re­turn­ing of­fi­cers and polling day staff, and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of ac­ces­si­ble venues for polling sta­tions.”

The EBC stat­ed that spe­cial vot­ing pro­ce­dures, as well as pro­to­cols for the count­ing of votes and the time­ly an­nounce­ment of re­sults, were al­so re­viewed.

The ob­servers’ team was ap­prised of the com­mis­sion’s po­si­tions re­gard­ing mat­ters cur­rent­ly and pre­vi­ous­ly raised in the pub­lic do­main.

“They re­it­er­at­ed their role was to ob­serve and learn. At the con­clu­sion of the meet­ing, both par­ties reaf­firmed their com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and on­go­ing co­op­er­a­tion as the na­tion pre­pares for Elec­tion Day on Mon­day, April 28, 2025,” the EBC added.

Grif­fith al­so told Guardian Me­dia that NTA is quite con­fi­dent that this team of ob­servers has the ex­pe­ri­ence and the abil­i­ty to en­sure close mon­i­tor­ing of what is tak­ing place and as­sure the coun­try that the polls will be free and fair.

Like UNC, Grif­fith said he ex­pressed the need for the ob­servers to mon­i­tor mar­gin­al seats, in­clud­ing St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, San Fer­nan­do West, and San­gre Grande.

He shared his con­cerns with the team about cam­paign fi­nance re­form, ex­press­ing his be­lief that it could lead to the un­due in­flu­ence of busi­ness­men and the in­volve­ment of “ques­tion­able el­e­ments” sup­port­ing can­di­dates.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored