Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with the Chief of Mis­sion of the CARI­COM Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion (CEOM), Ian Hugh­es, and oth­er mem­bers of the ob­serv­er team at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Wednes­day, five days ahead of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

The eight-mem­ber CARI­COM team, led by Hugh­es—Su­per­vi­sor of Elec­tions in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da—has been in the coun­try since Mon­day and is ex­pect­ed to ob­serve all stages of the elec­toral process. Oth­er mem­bers in­clude se­nior elec­toral of­fi­cials from Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Haiti, Saint Lu­cia, and Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

In a state­ment is­sued by the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, Hugh­es said the team wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­port the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process in Trinidad and To­ba­go and was en­cour­aged by the lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion shown so far. “We ap­pre­ci­ate the warm wel­come and the ac­cess we have been giv­en to meet stake­hold­ers across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum,” he said.

Dur­ing the meet­ing with Young, at­tend­ed by sev­er­al Cab­i­net min­is­ters, the Prime Min­is­ter reaf­firmed his in­vi­ta­tion for the team to ob­serve Mon­day’s poll. Hugh­es and his team have al­ready met with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion and mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance. Meet­ings with oth­er po­lit­i­cal groups and civ­il so­ci­ety rep­re­sen­ta­tives are sched­uled ahead of polling day.

On elec­tion day, the team will mon­i­tor the open­ing of polling sta­tions, the cast­ing and count­ing of votes, and the ear­ly tab­u­la­tion of re­sults. A pre­lim­i­nary state­ment will be is­sued af­ter the vote, with a fi­nal re­port to be sub­mit­ted to the CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al and shared with key na­tion­al stake­hold­ers. The mis­sion is ex­pect­ed to de­part on April 30.