Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Biss­esar has called on the Gov­ern­ment to give the sta­tus con­cern­ing the elec­tion ob­servers that Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young had said were ar­riv­ing in time for the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing at Thurs­day’s UNC labour con­sul­ta­tions in Cou­va, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “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 claimed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­count­ed that she had writ­ten to for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley about elec­tion ob­servers.

“Then I wrote to the in­com­ing ‘One Day’ Prime Min­is­ter and asked him to say what’s hap­pen­ing with the elec­tion ob­servers, and the next day he re­spond­ed. 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?”

“So we’re in the mid­dle of the elec­tion sea­son. I’m call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to tell us what is the state with re­spect to the elec­tion ob­servers. The UNC team went to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion on Mon­day, and the EBC could tell us noth­ing. They knew noth­ing about elec­tion ob­servers.”

She added, “You’d have seen that we dis­cov­ered a per­son cam­paign­ing with the ‘red brigade’ flag and every­thing else, and our gen­er­al sec­re­tary made a com­plaint to the EBC, and the per­son was re­moved from be­ing a Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer.”

The elec­tion work­er in ques­tion pre­vi­ous­ly served as a Pre­sid­ing Of­fi­cer, how­ev­er.

Among au­di­ence queries, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC would look in­to promis­es for for­mer Petrotrin work­ers to get lands.

The Postal Work­ers Union and Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union pledged to sup­port the UNC.

Labour lead­ers agreed that un­der the UNC Gov­ern­ment, there should be a to­tal over­haul and re­brand­ing of the In­dus­tri­al Court. OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get said con­fi­dence must be re­stored in it. He al­so rec­om­mend­ed a re­view of the process by which in­dus­tri­al court judges are ap­point­ed and that se­cu­ri­ty of tenure for judges must be en­sured.

“They must not be on con­tract and have to sing for their sup­per and pro­duce judge­ments we don’t have any con­fi­dence in,” he added.