DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

With a gen­er­al elec­tion due next year, ques­tions have arisen about the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) state of readi­ness.

The EBC ad­mit­ted yes­ter­day that the vot­er’s lists in just over half (23) of the con­stituen­cies will be com­plet­ed by ear­ly 2025 through its Na­tion­al Field Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Ex­er­cise (NFVE), which be­gan in mid-2023.

Ques­tions were sent to the EBC af­ter both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the ac­cu­ra­cy of its vot­ing list dur­ing the de­bate on the EBC 2024 re­port in­to its Re­view of Con­stituen­cy Bound­aries.

Al­though the EBC re­port (which rec­om­mend­ed bound­ary changes to 16 con­stituen­cies) was ac­cept­ed with­out amend­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar lament­ed that it has been more than two decades since the ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise was last con­duct­ed.

“In 2023, the EBC em­barked up­on a na­tion­al field ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise. This be­gan last year and you know some­thing, we have not had an ex­er­cise like this in 22 years, the last field ex­er­cise was 2001. And we are deal­ing with da­ta that de­ter­mines elec­tions and democ­ra­cy and the last one was 22 years ago,” she said.

Row­ley al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the “clean­li­ness” of the vot­er’s list, say­ing the EBC is slow to re­move peo­ple who have died.

“We need to have a se­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with the EBC on the whole ques­tion of how this list is cleaned up be­cause if in 2000, 100,000 peo­ple came off, be­tween then and now, is it pos­si­ble an­oth­er few tens of thou­sands should not be on the list?” the Prime Min­is­ter ques­tioned.

“And as peo­ple move around the coun­try, or as pop­u­la­tions grow, the EBC has the re­quire­ment to un­der­stand that, to know that and ap­ply it to the for­mu­la and the list. That’s what the EBC ex­ists to do, the ques­tion is, is it be­ing done? And if the com­mis­sion is tak­ing the po­si­tion of an­ces­tral vot­ing, then it is mak­ing a non­sense of want­i­ng to know who is where and how they fall as con­stituen­cies.”

How­ev­er, while the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion have found com­mon ground on is­sues sur­round­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of the EBC’s vot­ing list, the com­mis­sion blamed the Fi­nance Min­istry for fail­ing to pro­vide the fund­ing to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem.

“We have en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing fund­ing from the Min­istry of Fi­nance, which has hin­dered our progress,” the EBC said in a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia queries on the is­sues raised in Par­lia­ment.

It said oth­er chal­lenges in­clude dif­fi­cul­ty re­cruit­ing staff will­ing to work in high-risk ar­eas; dif­fi­cul­ty meet­ing in­di­vid­u­als to con­firm their reg­is­tra­tion in­for­ma­tion; hes­i­tan­cy from in­di­vid­u­als to speak with field in­ves­ti­ga­tors and the time-con­sum­ing ex­er­cise of ver­i­fy­ing the sur­vey da­ta.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert told Guardian Me­dia via email yes­ter­day that Gov­ern­ment ap­proved the trans­fer of funds with­in its 2024 bud­get ex­er­cise to fa­cil­i­tate the NFVE.

How­ev­er, he said fund­ing was af­fect­ed by the un­ex­pect­ed hold­ing of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions this year af­ter the Privy Coun­cil re­scind­ed the de­ci­sion to ex­tend the term of LG of­fi­cials by one year.

“The Min­istry of Fi­nance worked with the EBC to make funds avail­able in 2024 for the field ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise by ap­prov­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive trans­fers of funds with­in its 2024 bud­get for the ex­er­cise. How­ev­er, the 2024 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, which was nei­ther planned nor ex­pect­ed, and came out of the blue be­cause of a de­ci­sion of the Privy Coun­cil, which over­turned a de­ci­sion of the Court of Ap­peal that had up­held a de­ci­sion of the High Court that the term of lo­cal gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials was four years rather than three years, may have slowed down and af­fect­ed the progress of the field ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise, since the EBC would nat­u­ral­ly have been re­quired to fo­cus all its at­ten­tion on prepa­ra­tions for that lo­cal elec­tion,” Im­bert said.

In a sub­se­quent re­sponse, the EBC dis­closed that $20 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for the NFVE in fis­cal 2022-2023. How­ev­er, the com­mis­sion agreed prepa­ra­tion and con­duct of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE) took prece­dence. Still, the EBC said it man­aged to launch the NFVE and spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $5 mil­lion to start the ex­er­cise in the ini­tial con­stituen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to the EBC, in fis­cal 2023-2024, no al­lo­ca­tions were pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance for the NFVE. Nev­er­the­less, the EBC not­ed that with­in that fis­cal year, which end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 30th 2024, the EBC suc­cess­ful­ly worked with the min­istry to iden­ti­fy funds with­in its re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

“Those funds were pro­vid­ed and were al­lo­cat­ed to the project. The EBC spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $11 mil­lion to­wards the NFVE dur­ing that time.

“For the cur­rent fis­cal year, an al­lo­ca­tion of $2 mil­lion has been pro­vid­ed for the NFVE. To date, around $900,000 has been spent on the project in the con­stituen­cies where it is now ac­tive. The EBC plans to con­tin­ue util­is­ing the al­lo­cat­ed funds to ef­fec­tive­ly fur­ther the project’s progress.”

De­spite these chal­lenges, the EBC said it is con­tin­u­ing with its ex­ten­sive task to re­vise the elec­toral list across all 41 con­stituen­cies, though it is un­clear when the re­main­ing 18 con­stituen­cies will be tar­get­ed.

Sev­er­al chal­lenges

De­spite the chal­lenges faced, the EBC said it has com­plet­ed 14 con­stituen­cies with sev­en at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent com­ple­tion and the re­main­ing two be­tween 50 per cent and 80 per cent.

It ex­plained that its reg­is­tra­tion area of­fi­cers vis­it the dis­trict reg­is­trar of births and deaths week­ly to col­lect death records and up­date the data­base ac­cord­ing­ly; month­ly up­dates are shared by the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment about in­di­vid­u­als who passed away in the pre­vi­ous month, and oc­ca­sion­al in­for­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed by the pub­lic re­gard­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“These records are ex­tract­ed, field-checked, and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions are tak­en,” it said, adding it seeks as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs through con­sul­ta­tions with em­bassies to iden­ti­fy in­di­vid­u­als who have died out­side of T&T.

The EBC not­ed that it pub­lish­es the An­nu­al List of Elec­tors on Ju­ly 1, with cit­i­zens en­cour­aged to re­view the list and re­port dis­crep­an­cies. Af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion ex­er­cis­es al­so take place.

“Some names of de­ceased in­di­vid­u­als may re­main on the list due to the pub­li­ca­tion cut-off date,” the EBC clar­i­fied.

The EBC said it is ex­plor­ing ad­di­tion­al op­tions to main­tain a “clean” list, which in­cludes util­is­ing tech­nol­o­gy along­side tra­di­tion­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion meth­ods

The EBC al­so wel­comed the PM’s an­nounce­ment of Cari­com ob­servers be­ing in­vit­ed for gen­er­al elec­tions.

“These mis­sions are a stan­dard prac­tice in mod­ern democ­ra­cies, de­signed to eval­u­ate how elec­tions are con­duct­ed and man­aged. The EBC has ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence with such mis­sions, as its staff mem­bers have par­tic­i­pat­ed in ob­ser­va­tion mis­sions through­out the Caribbean and world­wide.”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said there is no clear-cut case that the EBC’s ex­er­cise could lead to al­le­ga­tions of vot­er fraud or vot­er padding. He al­so said it does not in­di­cate that the com­mis­sion is un­pre­pared for elec­tions.

“Ill-pre­pared is prob­a­bly a bet­ter word but the point about it is sim­ply that both the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion seem­ing­ly have ac­cept­ed the fact that the num­bers that the EBC has giv­en them, they are will­ing to work with it. The elec­tion goes ahead.”