PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) says it is “con­fused” by some of the queries be­ing raised by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­dates dur­ing the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­count process.

Yes­ter­day, de­feat­ed UNC can­di­date for St Joseph Ahloy Hunt told the me­dia he had found 172 dis­crep­an­cies in bal­lots com­ing from polling sta­tion 1041-1—which was lo­cat­ed at the Mount Hope Sec­ondary School. He said the con­cern was the con­sis­ten­cy, or lack there­of, with re­gard to the ini­tial af­fixed to the back of the bal­lot by the deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer.

“We ques­tioned that, we ques­tioned the ve­rac­i­ty of it, last night be­fore we were al­lowed to ex­am­ine each bal­lot and ini­tials, a num­ber of de­lib­er­a­tions took place that slowed the en­tire process,” Hunt said.

The letter to the EBC from lawyers representing UNC St Joseph candidate Ahloy Hunt raising concerns over the counting of ballots.

“The re­turn­ing of­fi­cer left the room on at least two oc­ca­sions, took very long. When they even­tu­al­ly agreed, they came back and al­lowed us, I along with my count­ing agent, we were able to ex­am­ine each bal­lot and each bal­lot, each showed the ini­tials. Big vari­a­tions in the ini­tials, what should be CE was CC, CL and some­thing else, that isn’t even a let­ter. There was no clar­i­ty of the ini­tial CE.”

The UNC can­di­date was joined by his broth­er Gary Hunt, a for­mer min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Gary Hunt, the for­mer Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s MP, said the con­cerns were not an at­tempt to de­lay the process.

“We want to make a stand, we are not be­ing a hin­drance to the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, we want this to be over but we want to en­sure that the process is clean, clear and to reg­u­la­tions. And we are ques­tion­ing the process and we are ques­tion­ing the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties of bal­lots,” Gary Hunt said.

The Hunts al­so ques­tioned why they weren’t al­lowed to see the polling sta­tion di­ary to es­tab­lish how many peo­ple vot­ed with­out an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card but rather un­der oath.

How­ev­er, EBC Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis Scope yes­ter­day ques­tioned the queries be­ing made by the NUC, not­ing none of them fell un­der the leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing an elec­tion re­count.

The letter from the Elections and Boundaries Commission in response to queries from lawyers representing UNC ST Joseph candidate Ahloy Hunt.

“In re­la­tion to the view­ing of the polling sta­tion di­ary and the sig­na­tures as raised by Mr Hunt, let me ad­vise you that the none of the re­quests made by Mr Hunt fall un­der the guide­lines or the leg­is­la­tion as it re­lates to how you pro­ceed with a re­count. None of them,” Nar­cis-Scope told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view. She ex­plained that the is­sue con­cern­ing the ini­tials on the bal­lot, if it had been an is­sue, should have raised on elec­tion night by the UNC’s agents dur­ing the count.

“In re­la­tion to the DPO ‘s sig­na­ture. The ini­tials rather, I am con­fused as to why Mr Hunt would raise that is­sue as be­ing well, I don’t know that he can speak to that as an ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty,” she said.

“At the time of the orig­i­nal count, polling agents would have been in the polling sta­tion act­ing on the gen­tle­men’s be­half. It would have been the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the polling agent in that polling sta­tion to raise whether or not there had been a dis­crep­an­cy. There was no such dur­ing the orig­i­nal count when they were count­ing bal­lots the first time.”

The counter-response to the Elections and Boundaries Commission from lawyers representing UNC St Joseph candidate Ahloy Hunt.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Hunt had sent let­ters to the EBC on Tues­day try­ing to get the mat­ter ad­dressed. Af­ter Nar­cis-Scope de­nied the re­quest, the at­tor­neys wrote back to her, urg­ing that she use her dis­cre­tion in ac­ced­ing to their re­quest.

“We note that your let­ter in re­sponse mere­ly takes refuge be­hind the ab­sence of a statu­to­ry pow­er but fails to pro­vide any rea­son to de­ny our client such an un­con­tro­ver­sial re­quest. We are of the view that any dis­cre­tion should be teth­ered to the con­cept of a free, fair and trans­par­ent elec­toral process,” at­tor­ney Rhea Khan wrote.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, your un­rea­son­able and pos­si­bly un­law­ful de­nial of our re­quest may have the in­ad­ver­tent ef­fect of shroud­ing the ex­tant re­count with un­cer­tain­ty which does not auger well for pub­lic con­fi­dence in the elec­toral process.”