Derek Achong

A res­i­dent of To­ba­go has called on the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) to re­con­sid­er its re­cent re­port, which led to the cre­ation of three new elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing June Mcken­zie, of Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, made the call late last week as they re­spond­ed to cor­re­spon­dence from the EBC’s Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope, who re­ject­ed her (McKen­zie) con­cerns raised in a let­ter to the EBC on Sep­tem­ber 22. 

In the orig­i­nal cor­re­spon­dence, McKen­zie’s lawyers chal­lenged the EBC’s re­port, which was sub­mit­ted to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Sep­tem­ber 10 and passed five days lat­er be­fore the Pres­i­dent is­sued the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly) (To­ba­go) 2021. 

McKen­zie’s lawyers sug­gest­ed that the re­port was il­le­gal as the EBC con­sid­ered com­mu­ni­ty frag­men­ta­tion or un­nec­es­sary di­vi­sion of com­mu­ni­ties when cre­at­ing the three new dis­tricts and re­quest­ed fur­ther dis­clo­sure of its (EBC) ra­tio­nale. 

In the EBC’s re­sponse on Sep­tem­ber 29, al­so ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Nar­cis-Scope claimed that the mat­ter is closed as the or­der by the Pres­i­dent can­not be chal­lenged in court. 

Nar­cis-Scope de­nied any wrong­do­ing in re­la­tion to the com­mis­sion’s re­port and said it was con­sis­tent with the statu­to­ri­ly pre­scribed pro­ce­dure. 

“It can­not be said that rea­son­able per­sons ap­ply­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate prin­ci­ples could not have set the elec­toral bound­aries as the Com­mis­sion has or that the Com­mis­sion took in­to ac­count ir­rel­e­vant con­sid­er­a­tions or ig­nored rel­e­vant ones,” Nar­cis-Scope said. 

“It (EBC) did not iden­ti­fy “threats to the in­tegri­ty of com­mu­ni­ties” and did not em­bark on any de­ter­mi­na­tion of “which com­mu­ni­ties could not be frac­tured,” she added. 

Re­spond­ing to Nar­cis-Scope’s re­sponse last week, Mcken­zie’s lawyer Rhea Khan chal­lenged her de­nial over the con­sid­er­a­tions while re­fer­ring to seg­ment of the EBC’s re­port where it gave jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for se­lect­ing the Good­wood/Belle Gar­den West dis­trict to be split in­stead of the Prov­i­dence/Ma­son Hall dis­trict, which had less reg­is­tered vot­ers.

“In­deed, if the plain and or­di­nary mean­ing of the lan­guage of the EBC re­port is to be be­lieved then the EBC clear­ly did con­sid­er or pur­port­ed to con­sid­er the is­sue of com­mu­ni­ty frag­men­ta­tion,” Khan said. 

Khan re­quest­ed fur­ther dis­clo­sure of the “field re­con­nais­sance sur­veys,” which were al­leged­ly used in prepar­ing the re­port. 

Khan gave the EBC a week to re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion and threat­ened to file le­gal pro­ceed­ings if the dead­line was not met.

The move to in­crease the elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go was the re­sult of a dead­lock in the THA elec­tions in Jan­u­ary, in which the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) each se­cured six dis­tricts. 

The three new dis­tricts are Lam­beau/Low­lands, Dar­ryl Spring/Whim and Mt St George/Good­wood. All but two of the orig­i­nal 12 dis­tricts were slight­ly mod­i­fied to make the change.