As Trinidad and To­ba­go awakes to this year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, has com­mend­ed the over­all con­duct of the elec­tion cam­paigns run by the po­lit­i­cal par­ties de­spite iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents which would have caused dis­rup­tions.

In his fi­nal as­sess­ment of the pe­ri­od with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath not­ed that the laps­es which breached the coun­cil’s code did not pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to the elec­torate.

“There were one or two in­stances of phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion. But be­yond the phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion and de­fac­ing and de­struc­tion of cam­paign para­pher­na­lia, those were the two great­est ar­eas of con­cern for us, as well as some deroga­to­ry lan­guage, the cam­paign could have done with­out. Gen­er­al­ly, we had a peace­ful cam­paign and a peace­ful elec­tion.” 

Ra­goonath, who is al­so a po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist, en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by cast­ing their votes. He em­pha­sized that every vote con­tributes to shap­ing the na­tion’s fu­ture and that civic en­gage­ment is cru­cial for a vi­brant democ­ra­cy.

Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis pre­vi­ous­ly re­vealed that 1,154,708 peo­ple are reg­is­tered to vote for the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“I hope we have a peace­ful vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion and many peo­ple as pos­si­ble come out and vote and more im­por­tant­ly that the process moves quick­ly enough not to frus­trate any­body. And all things be­ing equal, we should have a re­sult by 11 pm,” wished Ra­goonath.

Echo­ing Ra­goonath’s sen­ti­ment was Po­lit­i­cal An­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed who stressed that par­tic­i­pa­tion in elec­tions is fun­da­men­tal to hold­ing lead­ers ac­count­able and that the gov­ern­ment re­flects the peo­ple’s will.

“If you re­al­ly are se­ri­ous about the change that you want for the na­tion, the progress, the de­vel­op­ment, then the one way to make that hap­pen is by vot­ing. There­fore it is im­por­tant for women, young peo­ple, the ma­ture, all peo­ple across all lev­els of so­ci­ety- go out there and do their civic du­ty. It doesn’t take long de­pend­ing on the lines but the on­ly way to make sure our voic­es heard is to vote,” he urged.

Mo­hammed al­so drilled in on how a vot­er turnout can im­pact the re­sults.

“To­mor­row (to­day), that is one of the key things that I will look at. High vot­er turnout tends to be im­pact­ful and low vot­er turnout tends to keep the sta­tus quo or takes it down to the wire.”

In the Au­gust 10, 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion, the vot­er turnout was 58.04 per cent. This was a de­crease from the 66.8 per cent turnout in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty al­so urged cit­i­zens to vote.

Ki­ran Singh, Pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber of Com­merce (GS­FCC), al­so called for a free and fair elec­tion. Singh em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy and in­tegri­ty in the elec­toral process, urg­ing all stake­hold­ers to up­hold de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples.

“We ex­pect to see quite an in­ter­est­ing turnout at the polls. The TTPS in­di­cat­ed that they will be close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the process to en­sure a smooth vot­ing process, to en­sure no dis­rup­tions and we sup­port that the armed forces should al­so be out. We re­mind can­di­dates and vot­ers to re­spect the EBC’s reg­u­la­tions and guide­lines con­cern­ing the process.”

Singh not­ed that his cham­ber’s mem­ber­ship al­so met with the Cari­com elec­tion ob­serv­er team.

“We shared our views with them and we had a very in­for­ma­tive and fruit­ful dis­cus­sion on elec­tion 2025.” 

Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), Gary Grif­fith, yes­ter­day thanked cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go for their con­duct dur­ing the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paign.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Grif­fith not­ed that, while many cit­i­zens were ea­ger for the cam­paign pe­ri­od to be­gin and oth­ers for it to con­clude, the over­all con­duct demon­strat­ed ma­tu­ri­ty across the coun­try. He stat­ed that the peace­ful na­ture of the cam­paign com­pared favourably to elec­toral pe­ri­ods in oth­er parts of the world where vi­o­lence had oc­curred.

“It shows the ma­tu­ri­ty of our na­tion. It shows the ma­tu­ri­ty of all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He stat­ed that apart from mi­nor in­ci­dents, he en­coun­tered no in­stances of anger, dis­re­spect, ag­gres­sion, or an­i­mos­i­ty. He fur­ther not­ed that he ob­served strong com­mu­ni­ty spir­it and co­op­er­a­tion among cit­i­zens through­out the cam­paign.

In his state­ment, Grif­fith called for uni­ty fol­low­ing the elec­tion, re­mind­ing cit­i­zens that re­gard­less of the re­sults, the coun­try would have one Prime Min­is­ter, one gov­ern­ment, and one op­po­si­tion.

“Re­gard­less of who wins to­mor­row, there is go­ing to be a day called Tues­day the 29th of April, up­on which we will all be cit­i­zens of this great coun­try,” Grif­fith said. “We should all be ex­pect­ed to sup­port, re­gard­less of who wins and who would lose.”