Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

De­spite a for­mer pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer los­ing out on any fur­ther prospects of a job with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) af­ter pub­licly en­dors­ing Fos­ter Cum­mings on March 20, the in­cum­bent La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP be­lieves the Com­mis­sion did ex­act­ly what it was sup­posed to do.

Alana Fred­er­ick was on Wednes­day blanked by the EBC af­ter she ap­plied to work yet again with the Com­mis­sion on polling day (April 28) af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) brought a video to its at­ten­tion show­ing Fred­er­ick sit­ting in a car, hold­ing a PNM flag with Cum­mings’ name on it and de­clar­ing, “Great is the PNM.”

Fred­er­ick was em­ployed as a pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer be­fore and al­so in oth­er var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties with the EBC. A pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is es­sen­tial­ly the man­ag­er of a polling sta­tion on elec­tion day.

EBC CEO Fern Nar­cis told Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day that any­one iden­ti­fied as can­vass­ing on be­half of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty or en­gag­ing in cam­paign­ing in any way would not be al­lowed to work on elec­tion day.

Asked for his views on the de­vel­op­ment, Cum­mings yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia, “it is clear that the EBC are do­ing their work to make sure that peo­ple have con­fi­dence in the work that they do for all of us and if some­thing is brought to their at­ten­tion and they took ac­tion then as far as I am con­cerned, the EBC is do­ing what they are sup­posed to be do­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to speak with Fred­er­ick yes­ter­day how­ev­er she de­clined to com­ment and would on­ly say that she is cur­rent­ly “in good spir­its.”

Mean­while, asked if the EBC did the right thing even though at the time of the video, Fred­er­ick was not an em­ploy­ee of the Com­mis­sion, Cum­mings said he would not make a pro­nounce­ment on that.

“I am not here to com­ment on right or wrong, all I am say­ing is in the per­for­mance of its du­ties, the EBC cer­tain­ly would have tak­en in­to ac­count the fact that they want to make sure that per­sons who they hire tem­porar­i­ly to work for the elec­tions are not cam­paign­ing for ei­ther par­ty so the EBC has done its job and we press on from here,” said the PNM Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary.

But de­spite its seem­ing­ly quick ac­tion to re­ject Fred­er­ick, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not im­pressed and claimed, “the EBC is a to­tal cor­rupt­ed mess of an or­gan­i­sa­tion.”

In re­sponse to that, Cum­mings said the Op­po­si­tion Leader made, “no sense what­so­ev­er.”

In light of these de­vel­op­ments the EBC asked for po­lit­i­cal par­ties to re­port any sim­i­lar in­stances to en­sure that the rel­e­vant ac­tion is tak­en.

Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that as far as she was aware, no fur­ther re­ports had since come to their at­ten­tion.