In an in­ter­view ear­li­er to­day, THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine pro­vid­ed an up­date on his ex­pe­ri­ence at the polling sta­tion and the over­all progress of the elec­tion.

The process, ac­cord­ing to Au­gus­tine, went smooth­ly. "I was elect­ed num­ber 149 in my sta­tion. For a rur­al area like Spey­side, that is pret­ty high at this time of the day. Usu­al­ly, we would get a surge in the late af­ter­noon hours. But it meant that we had quite a num­ber of vot­ers ear­ly this morn­ing," he said. He fur­ther ex­plained that his polling sta­tion car­ries two di­vi­sions, and the num­ber 149 re­ferred to his po­si­tion in the polling di­vi­sion where he vot­ed.

Au­gus­tine was al­so asked if there were any is­sues dur­ing the morn­ing's vot­ing process. He ac­knowl­edged prob­lems en­coun­tered in the West, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing the ap­point­ment of sub-agents. "The process for ap­point­ing sub-agents is one where the par­ty, by way of a let­ter to EBC, will list and ap­point those sub-agents five days pri­or. We in fact did that," he ex­plained. Sub-agents re­place polling agents when nec­es­sary, for in­stance, if a polling agent needs to leave the sta­tion tem­porar­i­ly. How­ev­er, Au­gus­tine stat­ed that de­spite fol­low­ing the prop­er pro­ce­dure, sub-agents were not al­lowed ac­cess to the polling sta­tion. "Our sub-agents were not al­lowed in­side, and we had to call Mr. Par­rys out. We did what was re­quired based on the reg­u­la­tions and the law, and there’s no rea­son why all sub-agents were not al­lowed in­side," he said.

Au­gus­tine ex­pressed his con­cern over what he called the fail­ure of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) to in­form pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers about the ap­point­ed sub-agents, which af­fect­ed the ob­ser­va­tion of the bal­lot box­es. "It meant that in a few ar­eas we weren’t able to wit­ness the open­ing of the bal­lot box­es this morn­ing," he not­ed. Au­gus­tine in­di­cat­ed that this is­sue should be re­viewed by the EBC in the post-elec­tion as­sess­ment.

Re­gard­ing vot­er turnout, Au­gus­tine not­ed that the ini­tial days fol­low­ing the elec­tion an­nounce­ment were qui­et but that to­day’s turnout ap­peared high­er than ex­pect­ed. "We look as though we will have a high turnout to­day," he said. He fur­ther com­ment­ed on the dif­fer­ence be­tween turnout in THA and gen­er­al elec­tions, sug­gest­ing that the vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in the THA elec­tions tends to be high­er than in gen­er­al elec­tions.

When asked about re­ports of faults at polling sta­tions, Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged hear­ing about them but did not con­sid­er them sig­nif­i­cant. "I’ve heard the re­ports. I’ve seen some pho­tos, and I re­al­ly don’t op­er­ate in the pol­i­tics of su­per­sti­tion," he stat­ed. Re­fer­ring to re­ports of "obia" (To­ba­go folk­lore), Au­gus­tine said, "If salt was poured and salt cuts witch­craft, then it’s all our ben­e­fit."

On the ques­tion of whether the re­port­ed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties could be at­trib­uted to in­tim­i­da­tion, Au­gus­tine sug­gest­ed that such oc­cur­rences were pos­si­ble in a so­ci­ety like Trinidad and To­ba­go. "In a so­ci­ety as old as ours, it’s not far-fetched to think that some would try to in­tim­i­date," he com­ment­ed.

In con­clu­sion, Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges ear­li­er in the day but in­di­cat­ed that over­all op­er­a­tions had re­sumed smooth­ly. He ex­pressed hope that the elec­tion would see a high turnout and em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy in the process.