Shas­tri Boodan

Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) Fern Nar­cis-Scope says there is no law re­quir­ing peo­ple to wear a mask to vote dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion on Au­gust 10.

Nar­cis-Scope made the com­ment on Sun­day af­ter a re­port in the Trinidad Ex­press sug­gest­ed Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram had said vot­ers who did not show up at polling sta­tions wear­ing masks to pro­tect from the COVID-19 virus would not be al­lowed to vote.

“There is no law say­ing no mask no vote,” Nar­cis-Scope told Guardian Me­dia.

Nar­cis-Scope said the EBC was seek­ing the co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic and po­lit­i­cal par­ties to en­sure that all is be­ing done to pre­vent the spread of the virus dur­ing the run-up to the elec­tion and on the day of the vot­ing process.

She said the EBC had been in con­ver­sa­tion with the CMO, who sub­mit­ted a doc­u­ment on COVID-19 pro­to­cols to be fol­lowed to them on Fri­day for con­sid­er­a­tion. How­ev­er, she said that doc­u­ment has to be fi­nalised. Nar­cis-Scope said the news­pa­per sto­ry was in­cor­rect, adding it would be il­le­gal to de­bar peo­ple from vot­ing even if they turned up with­out masks.

Nar­cis-Scope said the EBC wants the full co­op­er­a­tion of the pub­lic on Au­gust 10 and is al­so look­ing at pro­vid­ing masks for peo­ple who got to polling sta­tions with­out masks.

Nar­cis-Scope’s clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the is­sue came even as UNC ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj had threat­ened to take le­gal ac­tion against the CMO to en­sure all vot­ers could cast their bal­lots, not­ing to de­bar those with­out masks from vot­ing was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

“I have re­ferred the is­sue to my at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan SC to ad­vise on le­gal op­tions to chal­lenge the re­stric­tions and there­by al­low all cit­i­zens to vote with­out any fet­ter. I plan to take this mat­ter to court once my lawyers give me the green light. We run the risk of the po­lice in­ter­fer­ing with the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of per­sons and chas­ing them out of the polling sta­tion,” Ma­haraj said be­fore Nar­cis-Scope clar­i­fied the is­sue.