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Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Police confirm irregularities on voting day

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
29 days ago
20250429
Deputy CoP, Intelligence and Investigations, Suzette Martin, Insp Joshua Pierre and Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime,  Richard Smith, speak to the media outside the Tunapuna Police Station yesterday.

Deputy CoP, Intelligence and Investigations, Suzette Martin, Insp Joshua Pierre and Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime, Richard Smith, speak to the media outside the Tunapuna Police Station yesterday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) says while it main­tained a strong op­er­a­tional pres­ence dur­ing elec­tion day 2025 yes­ter­day, sev­er­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties were re­port­ed and are cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, In­tel­li­gence & In­ves­ti­ga­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, con­firmed, “While the ma­jor­i­ty of the day’s ac­tiv­i­ties pro­ceed­ed peace­ful­ly, we did re­ceive sev­er­al re­ports, in­clud­ing bribery, in­tim­i­da­tion, im­per­son­ation, and in­ter­fer­ence with the elec­toral process.”

Aris­ing out of these re­ports, one man was held with $30,000 in cash in St Joseph around 10 am.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia as she ex­it­ed the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion with As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Crime, Richard Smith, Mar­tin said there was no ev­i­dence to cor­rob­o­rate claims the mon­ey had been in­tend­ed to pay off vot­ers.

In­stead, she con­firmed the sus­pect could not ac­count for how he had come to be in pos­ses­sion of the cash, and he re­port­ed­ly re­fused to re­veal ex­act­ly what it was to be used for.

Guardian Me­dia was lat­er told that the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) had been called in to as­sist and had seized the cash.

Mar­tin as­sured, “We take all al­le­ga­tions of in­tim­i­da­tion and elec­toral of­fences very se­ri­ous­ly.”

She warned, “Any at­tempt to in­ter­fere with a cit­i­zen’s right to vote freely and with­out fear strikes at the very heart of our democ­ra­cy and will not be tol­er­at­ed.”

Mar­tin en­cour­aged mem­bers of the pub­lic to re­port any in­ci­dents of vot­er in­tim­i­da­tion and oth­er elec­toral-day of­fences, as she said the TTPS was ready to pur­sue all re­ports.

She warned, “The TTPS will re­main on high alert in the com­ing days to en­sure law and or­der are main­tained through­out the coun­try.”

An­oth­er in­ci­dent yes­ter­day cen­tred around the search for a sus­pect who was al­leged­ly of­fer­ing peo­ple $1,000 to with­hold their vote.

The po­lice con­firmed in­for­ma­tion had been giv­en to them that peo­ple in the Mt Lam­bert/Mt D’or area had been ap­proached by the sus­pect, who had been of­fer­ing cash in ex­change for hold­ing on­to their na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, which would have been re­turned to them af­ter the polls closed at 6 pm.

Se­nior of­fi­cers said they were still search­ing for the sus­pect up to last evening.

2025 General Election


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