JAN­NELLE BERNARD

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says pro­pos­als to re­name five con­stituen­cies are not like­ly to im­pact vot­ing pat­terns.

In an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Ra­goonath said the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), which in­clude chang­ing the bound­aries in 16 con­stituen­cies, will not be im­ple­ment­ed in time to af­fect the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions. He added that vot­ing pat­terns in the coun­try tend to fol­low a pre­dictable trend.

“When you look at the name changes to the bound­aries, peo­ple in Clax­ton Bay who have al­ways been vot­ing UNC and PNM, al­though they would be vot­ing in Point-a-Pierre con­stituen­cy, they will con­tin­ue to vote the way that they have pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed,” he ex­plained.

“Some of them might de­cide they are go­ing to stay home, some of them might de­cide they will not vote for the par­ty that they will nor­mal­ly vote for, but I don’t think there is much of a shift in al­le­giances to par­ties at this time. A UNC per­son will hard­ly move from a UNC to a PNM. A PNM per­son will not move to go vote for UNC. They might con­sid­er vot­ing for an­oth­er par­ty or they might con­sid­er sim­ply stay­ing home.”

Ra­goonath added that con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to re­defin­ing bound­aries based on the num­ber of vot­ers in both Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Hamid Ghany, pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the UWI, said in an in­ter­view over the week­end that the EBC pro­pos­als did not make any sig­nif­i­cant changes that would dis­turb what ap­pear to be ex­ist­ing trends based on vot­ing be­hav­iour.

In a me­dia re­lease on Tues­day, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed the EBC had a his­to­ry of ger­ry­man­der­ing bound­aries to ben­e­fit the PNM.

She said in 2004, the EBC trans­ferred three strong PNM polling di­vi­sions in­to St Joseph in 2004. She fur­ther al­leged that the EBC took in­struc­tions from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to change bound­aries in To­ba­go to add new seats for the THA elec­tions af­ter the 6-6 dead­lock.