Gail Alexan­der

Cit­i­zens should get ready for elec­tions amid COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

The re­cent­ly-pre­sent­ed Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) draft or­der on T&T’s 41 con­stituen­cies is a pre­cur­sor for up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions - but the chal­lenge is now how T&T can host elec­tions amid COVID-19 safe­guards.

So said Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Gan­ga Singh in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley laid the EBC or­der there.

The or­der rec­om­mend­ed changes to bound­aries in 12 of the 41 con­stituen­cies: Cou­va North and Sout, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la and San­gre Grande, Laven­tille East and Laven­tille West, Port-of-Spain North and South, Oropouche East and West and San Fer­nan­do East and West. All oth­er con­stituen­cies re­main the same.

Row­ley de­scribed the bound­ary changes as “mi­nor.” The changes in­volve de­lim­i­ta­tion of some elec­toral ar­eas and shift­ing polling di­vi­sions in cer­tain con­stituen­cies in­to oth­er seats.

The 2019 or­der’s rec­om­men­da­tions must be ap­proved by Par­lia­ment.

Row­ley said T&T’s pop­u­la­tion will soon be 1.4 mil­lion over­all. The vot­ing pub­lic was about 1 mil­lion in 2015, he added.

UNC’s Singh, re­ply­ing to Row­ley’s pre­sen­ta­tion, took time to con­grat­u­late Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh and his team for “ris­ing to the ex­tra­or­di­nary (COVID) chal­lenge in pub­lic health and emerg­ing with some mea­sure of sta­bil­i­ty.”

But not­ing that so­cial dis­tanc­ing will now be the new nor­mal, Singh added, “So the chal­lenge we face now in the pan­dem­ic is, can we host a gen­er­al elec­tion with all the safe­guards re­quired for COVID-19?”

Not­ing that al­most 25,000 peo­ple usu­al­ly work for elec­tions, Singh asked how so­cial dis­tanc­ing can be main­tained with this.

“... And I’m not even get­ting in­to how you’re go­ing to cam­paign,”

Singh not­ed re­cent EBC state­ments on hav­ing polls amid COVID re­stric­tions and that elec­tron­ic vot­ing wasn’t pos­si­ble for T&T. He al­so asked what the leg­isla­tive path­way would be to ob­tain Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed cam­paign fi­nance re­form pri­or to elec­tions. He not­ed se­ri­ous prob­lems arose with Guyana’s re­cent poll, where per­son­nel were com­pro­mised and en­gaged in vote-rig­ging.

Singh not­ed elec­tions can be any­where be­tween Sep­tem­ber when the term ends to De­cem­ber 23. While the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for a de­lay of polls in event of war, he said the “war on COVID-19 ” didn’t al­low for that. Singh said it won’t be easy for T&T ahead, with oil and gas prices at all-time lows and Pt Lisas com­pa­nies in prob­lems.