Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter yes­ter­day’s an­nounce­ment of a new phase of COVID-19 spread, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der wrote Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and the Elec­tions Bound­aries Com­mis­sion call­ing for the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion to be post­poned.

In the let­ters, Alexan­der not­ed that the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple’s Act al­lows for the post­pone­ment of a poll due to - among rea­sons - out­break of in­fec­tious dis­ease.

It’s the sec­ond time PEP’s ex­pressed con­cern on the need to post­pone the poll.

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram yes­ter­day spoke of the new phase of COVID spread. But health of­fi­cials have steered clear of deem­ing it com­mu­ni­ty spread, say­ing T&T still re­mains in the cat­e­go­ry of spo­radic cas­es. But Paras­ram said the pri­ma­ry con­tacts of in­fect­ed per­sons are in the “hun­dreds”. Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh al­so lament­ed that au­thor­i­ties are hit­ting a wall when seek­ing in­for­ma­tion from peo­ple who are re­fus­ing to co-op­er­ate and give in­for­ma­tion for con­tact trac­ing.

Alexan­der’s let­ter to Weekes not­ed the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the COVID-19 spread, which he said seemed to be “mush­room­ing in­to a full-blown com­mu­ni­ty spread epi­dem­ic.”

“The rea­son for this writ­ing is out of con­cern that the Gen­er­al Elec­tion and every­thing lead­ing up to it may have the ef­fect of ex­ac­er­bat­ing the sit­u­a­tion and pro­mot­ing the spread of the virus to the detri­ment of the en­tire na­tion,” Phillip wrote.

“On polling day, a mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers are ex­pect­ed to con­gre­gate at polling sta­tions for hours, use the same con­fined fa­cil­i­ties to vote, cul­mi­nat­ing in the in­ser­tion of a fin­ger in­to the se­cu­ri­ty ink that could now be trans­formed in­to a vir­tu­al soup of COVID-19, cre­at­ing the po­ten­tial to in­fect every­one who us­es it and every­one they sub­se­quent­ly come in­to con­tact with.”

He not­ed the EBC could be in­struct­ed to im­ple­ment pro­to­cols to rem­e­dy this brew­ing cat­a­stro­phe, in­clud­ing the cre­ation of sani­ti­sa­tion pro­to­cols for polling sta­tions and the ad­di­tion of the ex­tra hours to the polling day that this will re­quire, or the post­pone­ment of the elec­tion al­to­geth­er for the full 30 days al­lowed or more for the in­ter­rup­tion of the trans­mis­sion of the virus, a far more im­por­tant is­sue than any oth­er at this time.

Alexan­der not­ed Sec­tion 34 of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple’s Act al­lows Weekes to ad­journ hold­ing the elec­tion for a 30-day pe­ri­od in the cur­rent sce­nario.

EBC of­fi­cials had no com­ment yes­ter­day on Alexan­der’s let­ter.