Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) Phillip Alexan­der is call­ing for a post­pone­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Alexan­der, there “are enough rea­sons to post­pone this elec­tion and we in the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty sug­gest that we as a na­tion should be hav­ing the dis­cus­sion”.

He fur­ther ex­plained that “chief among those” is the fact that T&T is at the start of what is look­ing like a wave of com­mu­ni­ty spread COVID-19 in­fec­tion, “and this alone may ham­per move­ment and per­sons’ in­ter­est in be­ing part of any process that can put them and their loved ones at so much risk of con­ta­gion”.

“In­stead of putting peo­ple in each oth­er’s faces for cam­paign­ing and vot­ing, we should, in fact, be re­turn­ing to a lock­down po­si­tion to halt this spread be­fore it be­comes a cri­sis,” Alexan­der said.

“Then there’s the fact that the very much need­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Ob­servers can­not make it in time, and again we as a na­tion have to an­swer if we are com­fort­able hav­ing this elec­tion un­su­per­vised, es­pe­cial­ly when one takes in­to ac­count the propen­si­ty of some in au­thor­i­ty to bend if not out­right break the rules to their ad­van­tage,” he added.

Alexan­der sug­gest­ed that the elec­tions be post­poned for three months or un­til the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is un­der con­trol and In­ter­na­tion­al Ob­servers able to at­tend.