SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt 

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) pro­posed ad­just­ments to 16 con­stituen­cies would lead to 11,805 vot­ers be­ing trans­ferred from one polling di­vi­sion (PD) to the next in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The ad­just­ment would see 18 polling di­vi­sions in UNC strong­holds shift­ing to PNM-con­trolled ar­eas and vice ver­sa.

It would al­so trig­ger trans­fer­ring of polling di­vi­sions from one PNM con­stituen­cy to the oth­er where the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion is in­ad­e­quate.

The trans­fer­ring of 11,805 elec­torates is con­tained in the EBC’s 2024 re­port, Re­view of Con­stituen­cy Bound­aries, which was ac­cept­ed by Par­lia­ment last Mon­day with­out amend­ments.

The re­port stat­ed that the ad­just­ments were made with due con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to the main­te­nance of com­mu­ni­ties and the use of nat­ur­al bound­aries wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

The 147-page re­port stat­ed that its method­ol­o­gy used ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tems and suit­able ad­just­ments to con­stituen­cies were iden­ti­fied by analysing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of polling di­vi­sions and the sta­tis­ti­cal im­pact of polling di­vi­sions trans­fers be­tween con­stituen­cies.

The elec­torate in any con­stituen­cy can­not be more than 110 per cent or less than 90 per cent of the to­tal elec­torate di­vid­ed by the num­ber of con­stituen­cies in the is­land.

There are 41 con­stituen­cies in T&T—39 in Trinidad and 2 in To­ba­go—of which 22 are un­der PNM con­trol and 19 are man­aged by the UNC.

The an­nu­al list of elec­tors pub­lished on No­vem­ber 30, 2023, by the EBC, con­tained 1,147,243 names of reg­is­tered elec­tors. Of this fig­ure, 1,095,080 elec­tors were reg­is­tered to vote in Trinidad. There were 52,163 reg­is­tered vot­ers in To­ba­go.

Of the 16 con­stituen­cies that need ad­just­ments, 11 are held by the rul­ing PNM while five are held by the Op­po­si­tion UNC.

The con­stituen­cies list­ed are Ca­roni Cen­tral, Tabaquite, Pointe-a-Pierre, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, D’Abadie/O’Meara, Arou­ca/Mal­oney, Port-of-Spain North/ St Ann’s West, Laven­tille West, Port-of-Spain South, Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, San Fer­nan­do East, San Fer­nan­do West, To­co/San­gre Grande, Ari­ma and Oropouche East.

A break­down of some of the ad­just­ments in the re­port showed:

1. In the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la seat, now held by the UNC’s Dr Rai Rag­bir, 407 votes from polling di­vi­sion 2390 will be moved to La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, held by PNM’s Fos­ter Cum­mings. This will in­crease the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro to 28,526.

2. In the D’Abadie/O’Meara con­stituen­cy, held by the PNM’s Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, 2,401 elec­tors from polling di­vi­sion 1806 will be redi­rect­ed to Arou­ca/ Mal­oney con­stituen­cy, held by the PNM’s Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, to in­crease its vot­ing list from 26,545 to 28,946. D’Abadie/O’Meara elec­torates would be re­duced from 28,946 to 26,545.

3. In the Oropouche East seat, cur­rent­ly held by the UNC’s Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, polling di­vi­sions 3871 and 3874 con­sist­ing of 1,341 vot­ers will move to San Fer­nan­do East, held by the PNM’s Bri­an Man­ning, tak­ing the to­tal vot­ing pop­u­la­tion from 25,231 to 26,572. This means that the elec­torate in Oropouche East would be re­duced from 29,087 to 27,746.

4. The To­co/San­gre Grande seat, held by the PNM’s Roger Mon­roe, has the largest vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of all 41 con­stituen­cies - 32,498 elec­tors. The con­stituen­cy stands to lose 2,000 vot­ers to the Ari­ma seat held by the PNM’s Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. Vot­ers in the Ari­ma con­stituen­cy will in­crease from 26,577 to 28,577.

5. Changes in oth­er con­stituen­cies in­clude the trans­fer of 814 votes from Laven­tille West to Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, both of which are PNM con­stituen­cies.

6. The votes in Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West would climb to 25,895 while Laven­tille West would drop to 24,031.

7. Laven­tille West, how­ev­er, got a boost of 1,326 votes from its neigh­bour­ing PNM con­stituen­cy of Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, tak­ing the fig­ure to 25,357. This move re­sult­ed in Laven­tille East/Mor­vant votes slid­ing from 26,678 to 25,352.

On Mon­day, both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar raised con­cerns about the ac­cu­ra­cy of the EBC’s vot­ing list dur­ing the de­bate on the re­port.

Ques­tions were al­so raised about the EBC’s state of readi­ness.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­cern that it has been more than two decades since a ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise was last con­duct­ed.

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

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

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 fund­ing to rec­ti­fy the prob­lem. They al­so cit­ed sev­er­al chal­lenges hin­der­ing the process.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has coun­tered those claims.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so raised con­cerns about the EB’s pro­posed ad­just­ments to the bound­aries of 16 con­stituen­cies, stat­ing that this could re­sult in in­creased num­bers in PNM ar­eas.

She al­so al­leged “col­lu­sion” be­tween the EBC and the PNM, crit­i­ciz­ing the Com­mis­sion’s fail­ure to up­date the vot­er list across the 41 con­stituen­cies through the ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.

Da­ta in the re­port showed that four con­stituen­cies To­co/San­gre Grande, D’Abadie/O’Meara, Ca­roni Cen­tral and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la fall above the per­mis­si­ble up­per lim­it while Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, San Fer­nan­do East, Port-of-Spain South, San Fer­nan­do West and Pointe-a-Pierre fall be­low the per­mis­si­ble low­er lim­it.

The per­mis­si­ble up­per lim­it in Trinidad is 30,887 while in To­ba­go it is 28,690.

Trinidad’s Per­mis­si­ble Low­er Lim­it is 25,271. In To­ba­go, it is 23,473.

The av­er­age per con­stituen­cy in Trinidad was 28,079. In To­ba­go, it stood at 26,082.

The EBC al­so rec­om­mend­ed name change in five con­stituen­cies, four of which fall un­der PNM con­trol. Arou­ca/Mal­oney would be re­named Trinci­ty/Mal­oney (PNM), D’Abadie/O’Meara would be changed to Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca (PNM), Lopinot/Bon Air West would be called Arou­ca/Lopinot (PNM), St Joseph would be iden­ti­fied as Aranguez/St Joseph (PNM) and Pointe-a-Pierre would be known as Clax­ton Bay (UNC).

Da­ta in the re­port showed the EBC record­ed 1,074,164 elec­tors in Trinidad at the end of 2018. In To­ba­go, there were 49,927 vot­ers.

Fast track to No­vem­ber 30, 2023, the EBC’s re­port had an elec­torate of 1,095,080 for Trinidad while To­ba­go had 52,163. The up­dat­ed fig­ures rep­re­sent­ed an uptick of 23,374 more vot­ers in Trinidad and 2,236 in To­ba­go over the five years.

There were de­creas­es in four PNM seats and one UNC seat to­talling 2,458 elec­tors. They are Arou­ca/Mal­oney (173), Laven­tille East/Mor­vant (1,329), Laven­tille West (436) and San Fer­nan­do East (211) and Barataria/San Juan (309).

In the 41 con­stituen­cies, a break­down showed that 18 of the PNM’s 22 seats had a to­tal in­crease of 12,260 elec­tors com­pared to the UNC’s 18 seats with 13,350 new vot­ers.

The re­port showed that the PNM’s To­ba­go West seat at­tract­ed 1,281 more vot­ers, while the D’Abadie/O’Meara seat of MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian grew by 1,235. 

The Port-of-Spain South con­stituen­cy saw 1,133 elec­tors added to its list. The Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la seat of UNC’s Dr Rai Rag­bir gained 2,280 votes, fol­lowed by Ca­roni Cen­tral with 1,888 and Cou­va South trail­ing with 1,463.

Row­ley’s Diego Mar­tin West seat grew by 237 votes (from 29,719 to 29,953).

The elec­torate in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Siparia con­stituen­cy jumped from 28,469 to 28,881 - an in­crease of 412.

Sta­tis­tics for the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions showed that Row­ley re­ceived 12,855 votes in his Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy com­pared to Per­sad-Bisses­sar who got 14,896 in her Siparia seat. Both got few­er votes in 2020 with 10,791 and 13,487 re­spec­tive­ly.