KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date Faris Al-Rawi has con­firmed that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) plans to file an elec­tion pe­ti­tion for the Princes Town con­stituen­cy.

He gave the con­fir­ma­tion af­ter cast­ing his vote at the San Fer­nan­do West Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day, hours be­fore Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Bar­ry Padarath re­claimed the seat.

Al-Rawi said as an at­tor­ney, he had 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 (yes­ter­day). That is for an­oth­er event.”

Al-Rawi said the PNM had al­ready spo­ken about the mat­ter. While he did not want to talk more on the top­ic un­til the end of the elec­tion, he said he is count­ing an ad­di­tion­al seat for the PNM.

He said the vot­ing process went quick­ly for him yes­ter­day. As the 237th per­son to cast a bal­lot at the polling sta­tion just be­fore mid­day, he said he be­lieved this showed a good turnout of vot­ers.

There were com­plaints by the UNC about the long wait by vot­ers but Al-Rawi summed it up to in­ex­pe­ri­enced per­son­nel at the Gulf View Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre polling sta­tion. He said there is al­ways is a high vot­er turnout in San Fer­nan­do West and said he ex­pect­ed that the num­bers would be par for pre­vi­ous elec­tions.

Al-Rawi said his cam­paign team spot­ted a few ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties be­fore the elec­tion 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,” he said.

“There is one par­tic­u­lar ad­vo­cate for Gulf View who in­sist­ed that she lo­cate 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.”

While the elec­tion went ahead with­out Cari­com or Com­mon­wealth ob­servers, Al-Rawi said there was heavy po­lice pres­ence and polling agents were in­side the vot­ing ar­eas 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,” he said.