The 55 per­sons who have been ap­point­ed to serve as Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers for the Au­gust 14, 2023, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions were pre­sent­ed with Writs of Elec­tion, is­sued by the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) ex­plains now that the Writs of Elec­tion have been dis­trib­uted, Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers have been giv­en “the au­thor­i­ty to cause a poll to be tak­en in their re­spec­tive elec­toral dis­tricts on be­half of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).”

In her Open­ing Re­marks to the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers and some prospec­tive Elec­tion Clerks, Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer, Mrs. Fern Nar­cis-Scope, thanked the at­ten­dees for their com­mit­ment to civic du­ty.  She re­mind­ed them of the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy and in­tegri­ty in build­ing the pub­lic’s trust and con­fi­dence in the elec­toral process in sup­port of fair and free elec­tions.

EBC Com­mis­sion­er, Mrs. Danielle Chow, in her ad­dress to the at­ten­dees ac­knowl­edged that the man­age­ment of Lo­cal Elec­tions was prob­a­bly the most daunt­ing and de­mand­ing lo­gis­ti­cal op­er­a­tion of all of the elec­tions which the EBC man­aged.

“For this elec­tion, there are 141 elec­toral dis­tricts, over 2,000 prospec­tive polling sta­tions and more than 13,000 prospec­tive polling day staff to be man­aged,” Com­mis­sion­er Chow not­ed.

She said the ex­er­cise was un­der­pinned with “well-es­tab­lished and de­fined elec­toral process­es and con­trols, which were es­tab­lished by the law and best prac­tice.”

Com­mis­sion­er Chow ac­knowl­edged the high lev­el of ex­pe­ri­ence and skills with­in the group in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant elec­toral ex­pe­ri­ence.  She in­vit­ed the Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers to be true ‘Part­ners in Democ­ra­cy’ with EBC. She said she was en­cour­aged by a con­tin­u­ing in­ter­est in fos­ter­ing democ­ra­cy in the coun­try with new­er per­sons join­ing the group.

The Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers were pre­sent­ed with their Writs, which were trans­mit­ted in ac­cor­dance with Elec­tion Rule 3 of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act, Chap­ter 2:01, at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts on Sun­day 11 June 2023.