De­spite an in­crease in lo­cal­ly spread COVID-19 cas­es, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion will go on.

Af­ter Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes re­ject­ed the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty's re­quest for post­pone­ment of the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the par­ty has again asked the Pres­i­dent to re­con­sid­er af­ter yes­ter­day's news of eight more COVID-19 cas­es.

With a mere 11 days to go be­fore the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, a poll com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed and con­duct­ed by HHB and As­so­ciates shows that the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has a clear lead over its main ri­val, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), in the cru­cial mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of Moru­ga/Table­land.

Vot­ers be­lieve the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is more “out of touch with or­di­nary peo­ple” when com­pared to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

That was the roar for the Au­gust 20 Gen­er­al Elec­tion from Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date Faris Al-Rawi at last night’s San Fer­nan­do West “meet­up”.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James be­lieves vot­ing based along racial lines boils down to sev­er­al ba­sic fac­tors, the ma­jor one be­ing that peo­ple trust politi­cians who are the same race as theirs.

Both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress yes­ter­day ex­pressed sat­is­fac­tion with a Guardian Me­dia-com­mis­sioned poll, the re­sult of which was pub­lished on Sunday.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has con­firmed that he has made re­quests to po­ten­tial bene­fac­tors with­in the Com­mon­wealth com­mu­ni­ty to cov­er the costs of in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers for the up­com­ing Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

A day af­ter his quar­an­tine end­ed, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date for Princes Town Bar­ry Padarath re­turned to his con­stituen­cy to cam­paign and re­vealed that the po­lice had not yet con­tact­ed him about any on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Moru­ga/Table­land is a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy in Trinidad’s south­land with 27, 851 reg­is­tered vot­ers.

A re­cent poll has shown a near sta­tis­ti­cal tie in the rat­ings of Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in terms of who would make the bet­ter Prime Min­is­ter lead­ing up to the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

There won’t be any Com­mon­wealth ob­servers com­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Au­gust 10 – but there's the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Cari­com ob­servers, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed on Fri­day night.