The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs has con­firmed that ob­serv­er mis­sions from both Cari­com and the Com­mon­wealth will mon­i­tor T&T’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28.

In a state­ment, the min­istry said it had “re­ceived cor­re­spon­dence con­firm­ing the pres­ence of Elec­tion Ob­serv­er Mis­sions from the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) and the Com­mon­wealth.” The mis­sions are sched­uled to be in the coun­try from April 21 to April 30, and are ex­pect­ed to “share their ob­ser­va­tions and make rec­om­men­da­tions for fu­ture elec­toral process­es with rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, stake­hold­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic.”

A let­ter from the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at dat­ed March 25 con­firmed the de­ploy­ment of its mis­sion. It stat­ed, “Arrange­ments will be made to de­ploy a Com­mon­wealth Elec­toral Mis­sion and con­tact will be made with the rel­e­vant of­fi­cials to co­or­di­nate plan­ning and de­ploy­ment of the mis­sion.”

Cari­com’s con­fir­ma­tion came ear­li­er in a let­ter dat­ed Jan­u­ary 13, in re­sponse to a re­quest by then-prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

A third ob­serv­er group, the Carter Cen­ter, was al­so in­vit­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young. In a let­ter dat­ed March 21, Young wrote to Dr David Car­roll, Di­rec­tor of the Democ­ra­cy Pro­gram at the Carter Cen­ter, stat­ing,

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has a his­to­ry of en­joy­ing free and fair elec­tions and has ben­e­fit­ed in the past from the pres­ence and con­tri­bu­tion of ex­ter­nal elec­tion ob­servers. The com­pe­tence and ex­per­tise of The Carter Cen­ter in this re­gard are du­ly recog­nised.”

As of now, the Carter Cen­ter has not con­firmed its par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The con­fir­ma­tion of the Cari­com and Com­mon­wealth mis­sions fol­lows pub­lic pres­sure from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who re­cent­ly ques­tioned the ab­sence of elec­tion ob­servers.

Speak­ing at a UNC Labour Con­sul­ta­tion in Cou­va, she de­mand­ed: “Please give the coun­try an up­date on the sta­tus of the elec­tion ob­servers. We can­not al­low you to sit there and ‘tief’ the elec­tions.”

She said she had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten to Dr Row­ley and Young, whom she re­ferred to as the “one-day Prime Min­is­ter,” about the mat­ter. “They told us Cari­com is com­ing, and the Carter Cen­tre is com­ing, and I think the Com­mon­wealth ob­servers. Have you seen any of these peo­ple in Trinidad?” she asked.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a UNC del­e­ga­tion vis­it­ed the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion on Mon­day and was told, “They knew noth­ing about elec­tion ob­servers.”

Her con­cerns fol­lowed re­ports that an elec­tion work­er, once seen cam­paign­ing with the PNM, had to be re­moved as a Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer af­ter a com­plaint was lodged by the UNC’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary.