A Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group (COG) will ar­rive in this coun­try next Tues­day (April 22), as they have been de­ployed to ob­serve the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

When the team ar­rives, it will meet key stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the elec­tion man­age­ment body, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, civ­il so­ci­ety groups, me­dia, the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er re­gion­al and cit­i­zen ob­servers.

This was con­firmed by the Com­mon­wealth in a state­ment yes­ter­day.

From April 26, ob­servers will de­ployed in small teams to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to ob­serve elec­tion prepa­ra­tions and meet with lo­cal stake­hold­ers in their re­spec­tive lo­ca­tions. 

On elec­tion day (April 28), the group will ob­serve the open­ing, vot­ing, clos­ing, count­ing and the re­sults man­age­ment process­es. The COG will then is­sue an in­ter­im state­ment on its pre­lim­i­nary find­ings on April 30. 

The team is man­dat­ed to ob­serve and con­sid­er fac­tors af­fect­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the elec­toral process and as­sess if the elec­tions are con­duct­ed ac­cord­ing to the stan­dards for de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions.

The team, led by Evarist Bar­to­lo, a for­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter of Mal­ta with over 30 years of par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence, con­sists of six em­i­nent peo­ple from across the Com­mon­wealth. They bring ex­per­tise in me­dia, law, elec­toral man­age­ment, and civ­il so­ci­ety.

Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, Shirley Ay­orkor Botch­wey, said, “The Com­mon­wealth is pleased to de­ploy an ob­serv­er mis­sion to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tions, demon­strat­ing our com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing democ­ra­cy and good gov­er­nance in our mem­ber states. Our elec­tion ob­ser­va­tion work and ef­forts to strength­en de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process­es, cul­ture, and in­sti­tu­tions across mem­ber states are world-lead­ing, and we look for­ward to work­ing with the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to en­sure a cred­i­ble and trans­par­ent elec­toral process.”