SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope said yes­ter­day that the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) had re­ceived six re­quests for re­counts in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Nar­cis-Scope said re­counts had been re­quest­ed for the con­stituen­cies of St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, To­ba­go East, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, To­co/San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do West.

All six were de­clared to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) fol­low­ing the ini­tial tal­ly of votes on Mon­day night af­ter the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. The re­counts be­gan at 3 pm yes­ter­day.

Nar­cis-Scope con­firmed that the re­quests were made for a re­count of all the bal­lots cast in the six con­stituen­cies.

She al­so ad­dressed the al­le­ga­tions that vot­ers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is­sues with sani­tis­er blur­ring the ink on bal­lot pa­pers dur­ing Mon­day’s elec­tion.

“We used sani­tis­er that evap­o­rat­ed very quick­ly be­cause it was 80 per cent al­co­hol. As I said, while I have heard a can­di­date at the time made that al­le­ga­tion, I do not know that it was, in fact, cor­rect—and I have no re­port or com­plaints from the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers who would have been tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to count the bal­lots that it was ac­tu­al­ly cor­rect, that at the time was sim­ply the think­ing of a can­di­date but I don’t know that it was ac­tu­al­ly re­al­i­ty,” Nar­cis-Scope said.

Nar­cis-Scope was al­so told of an in­ci­dent where a cit­i­zen com­plained that some­one had used her name to vote in San Fer­nan­do West. The woman said she was even­tu­al­ly al­lowed to vote af­ter she com­plained.

But Nar­cis-Scope said she had no re­ports of that in­ci­dent. She ex­plained that if vot­ers had made com­plaints at the polling sta­tions, the EBC would get re­ports of those com­plaints.

“If she had gone to the sta­tion and such an in­ci­dent had tran­spired, the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer would have got­ten in­to con­tact with the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer and they are well trained, they know what they have to do, the reg­is­tra­tion area of­fice would have al­so got­ten in­volved, the staff at our EBC of­fice would al­so have got­ten in­volved. If that had hap­pened, there is a process and if there was any va­lid­i­ty in­to her al­le­ga­tions, steps would have been tak­en to rec­ti­fy it. So that’s why I am say­ing I can’t com­ment any fur­ther be­cause I am to­tal­ly un­aware of what you are talk­ing about,” Nar­cis-Scope said.

She said she was told by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers that vot­ers com­plained about hav­ing to wait in long lines to cast their votes but she at­trib­uted that wait to COVID-19 pro­to­cols be­ing en­forced.

Nar­cis-Scope said there were al­so com­plaints about the weath­er.

“The weath­er came in­to play in cer­tain ar­eas but there was noth­ing one could have done about that, peo­ple would have had to weath­er the storm, so to speak, so that they could be able to ex­er­cise their fran­chise,” she said.