Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

At least two po­lit­i­cal par­ties are ques­tion­ing the in­tegri­ty of the Cari­com elec­tion ob­servers who have been re­quest­ed to over­see the next gen­er­al elec­tions.

On Mon­day in the Low­er House, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced he has al­ready in­di­cat­ed to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at that Gov­ern­ment wants an ob­serv­er del­e­ga­tion here when­ev­er the elec­tion takes place.

This af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed she had writ­ten to Dr Row­ley in Sep­tem­ber re­quest­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers for the elec­tion.

How­ev­er, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia the Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment of­fers lit­tle com­fort nor does it sig­nal trans­paren­cy.

“Speak­ing for me, I have no re­spect for what Cari­com rep­re­sents. It does noth­ing for any­body, so to say that Cari­com ob­servers will bring some sort of val­ue, it does noth­ing for me,” Alexan­der said.

Alexan­der said there are oth­er well-es­tab­lished or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Jim­my Carter Foun­da­tion that the Gov­ern­ment can turn to for “prop­er in­cor­rupt­ible ob­servers.”

“This, I be­lieve, is an­oth­er stunt from a stunt artist. Kei­th Row­ley is end­ing his ca­reer how he be­gan, as one big stunt artist. None of this is sup­posed to do any­thing oth­er than dis­tract us with more non­sense. No, I don’t think Cari­com ob­servers will be of any val­ue to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s elec­tions,” Alexan­der, whose par­ty has de­clared it­self an al­ly of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), said.

While the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke be­lieves the re­quest for Cari­com ob­servers sends pos­i­tive sig­nals as it per­tains to open­ness and trans­paren­cy, he al­so had reser­va­tions about the com­po­si­tion of the del­e­ga­tion.

“One of the con­cerns the PDP would have, is whether or not the choos­ing of those per­sons will re­sult in PNM sym­pa­this­ers. We do not want that to hap­pen, so the se­lec­tion of the per­son­nel would be very cru­cial. I am yet to know the cri­te­ria that would be used to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial ob­servers from the Caribbean and what would be their qual­i­fi­ca­tion to main­tain that lev­el of in­tegri­ty while ob­serv­ing the elec­tions,” Duke told Guardian Me­dia.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves the PDP and PEP are be­ing ridicu­lous with their con­cerns.

“How in God’s name are we go­ing to have PNM sym­pa­this­ers com­ing to Cari­com? It’s not like Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is a com­plete stranger to Cari­com, she was chair of Cari­com and served in a lead­ing role. At one point in time, just like Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the on­ly woman sit­ting in Cari­com. “So, does not Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar have col­leagues in Cari­com as well? This is ridicu­lous. So does not Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar have a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with her Cari­com com­rades? This is pre­pos­ter­ous. It is pol­i­tick­ing with things we should not be pol­i­tick­ing with,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed added that the re­quest for ob­servers from the re­gion should be seen as a good thing.

Some po­lit­i­cal par­ties al­so see it that way.

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) is of the view that this will take away any per­cep­tion there are clan­des­tine at­tempts to win the elec­tion through im­prop­er means.

“Def­i­nite­ly, what the coun­try does not want to hear for the next five years af­ter the re­sults, re­gard­less of who wins or los­es, is to hear croc­o­dile tears and per­sons cry­ing and com­plain­ing that it’s be­cause the rains fell and there was an ex­ten­sion or there was vot­er padding. All of these com­ments that you hear from losers, the coun­try does not want to hear that. Who­ev­er wins we need to move for­ward,” NTA leader Gary Grif­fith as­sert­ed.

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) leader David Ab­du­lah al­so be­lieves this move will sat­is­fy any­one who would have doubts about this coun­try’s elec­toral process.

How­ev­er, he said there are oth­er, more press­ing con­cerns as it per­tains to a trans­par­ent elec­toral process, not­ing the MSJ has been mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for ma­jor re­forms to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

“We pro­pose that the EBC it­self be con­struct­ed dif­fer­ent­ly to have a civ­il so­ci­ety over­sight com­mit­tee, so that you would have rep­re­sen­ta­tives of bonafide groups such as busi­ness and labour. The EBC would then in­ter­face with them so there would be a non-par­ti­san in­de­pen­dent re­view of the work of the EBC. So, with re­spect to things like bound­ary changes, it would not just go to gov­ern­ment where there is a built-in ma­jor­i­ty,” the MSJ leader ex­plained.