KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Con­fi­dent of win­ning to­day's gen­er­al elec­tions, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi says the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is al­ready on the back foot as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) plans to file an elec­tion pe­ti­tion for the Princes Town con­stituen­cy.
"I am con­fi­dent that we will be back in gov­ern­ment to­mor­row morn­ing. In fact, tonight, " Al-Rawi said af­ter cast­ing his vote at the San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School this morn­ing.
He said that as an at­tor­ney-at-law, he en­gaged in sev­er­al elec­tion pe­ti­tions over the year. He even fought his own elec­tion pe­ti­tion for which he said cost is still out­stand­ing.
"The UNC has some $7 mil­lion in le­gal cost to pay the PNM, and the pri­ma­ry tar­get was Faris Al-Rawi. I am very, very well fa­mil­iar with what I need to do in terms of man­ag­ing elec­tion pe­ti­tions. There will be an elec­tion pe­ti­tion in this elec­tion for sure be­cause Princes Town is lost, quite prop­er­ly, so that is def­i­nite­ly a seat that will come to the PNM. But I do not want you to cov­er that nec­es­sar­i­ly to­day. That is for an­oth­er event."
Al-Rawi said the PNM al­ready spoke about this mat­ter. While he did not want to talk more on the top­ic un­til the end of the elec­tions, he said he is count­ing an ad­di­tion­al seat for the PNM.
He said the vot­ing process went quick­ly. As the 237th per­son to cast a bal­lot at that polling sta­tion just be­fore mid­day, he be­lieves this shows a good turnout of vot­ers. While there were com­plaints by the UNC about the long wait by vot­ers, but Al-Rawi summed it up to in­ex­pe­ri­ence per­son­nel at the Gulf View Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre polling sta­tion. He said there is al­ways is a high vot­er turnout in San Fer­nan­do West and it seems that the num­bers will be par for pre­vi­ous elec­tions.
Al-Rawi said his cam­paign team spot­ted a few ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­fore the elec­tions be­gan, such as poll cards is­sued in the wrong place and po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tise­ments near polling sta­tions.
"I have to con­demn the UNC's con­tin­ued ad­ver­tise­ments. There are sign­boards that are run­ning in con­tra­ven­tion to the law to­day. I mean dig­i­tal and elec­tron­ic sign­boards. There is one par­tic­u­lar ad­vo­cate for Gulf View who in­sist­ed that she lo­cat­ed her­self in the line from  6 am un­til the po­lice just re­moved her a short while ago. That is con­trary to elec­tion rules, and I want to warn the UNC that they have to obey the rules. As sim­ple as wear­ing your mask or ob­serv­ing elec­tion rules un­der the law. Those are things that can­not be tol­er­at­ed, and those are a few of the blots that we have no­ticed to­day."
Al-Rawi said the PNM is care­ful about the af­ter­math of the elec­tions, ac­knowl­edg­ing that COVID-19 re­mains an is­sue. He said while they ob­serve the pub­lic health pro­to­cols, he was shocked at the UNC's dis­re­gard for it. 
"We will be in our re­spec­tive zones. There will be no mass gath­er­ing at Bal­isi­er House as is tra­di­tion­al. When we ob­tain our vic­to­ry tonight, that is not on the cards. We are keep­ing with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of the pro­to­cols.
"It was quite shock­ing; some­body sent me a pic­ture of me pass­ing by one of my op­po­nent, Sean sobers, and I was amazed that at the UNC camp, no­body wears a mask. It is very, very dif­fer­ent if you come to our head of­fice and struc­tures. We are just not in that po­si­tion, so we are tak­ing the COVID sit­u­a­tion very se­ri­ous­ly."
While the elec­tions goes with­out CARI­COM or Com­mon­wealth ob­servers, Al-Rawi said there is a heavy po­lice pres­ence, polling agents are in­side the vot­ing ar­eas, and the me­dia are mon­i­tor­ing the process. He al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion and that the coun­try could man­age its elec­tions safe­ly.
"I re­mind you, at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, we nev­er have com­plaints. I do not think it is an ab­solute ne­ces­si­ty that there is CARI­COM or Com­mon­wealth ob­servers. The in­vi­ta­tion was made; they said they could not af­ford it, nor would they man­age it in the COVID pe­ri­od. It is not that Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley did not want it, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley of­fer it, vol­un­teered it, it was not ac­cept­ed."