Renu­ka Singh

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has promised to ad­vise the pop­u­la­tion about the sta­tus of the ob­servers in­vit­ed to over­see the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion process soon.

This was the word from PNM Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma Lee-Sing on Fri­day in re­sponse to the lat­est call for in­de­pen­dent ob­servers made by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

In a me­dia re­lease Fri­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mind­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that the clock was tick­ing and that any ob­serv­er would need to be quar­an­tined for 14 days be­fore the elec­tion. There are on­ly 16 days left be­fore the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was con­cerned that weeks af­ter mak­ing the call about im­par­tial ob­servers, “none has ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

She said af­ter she made the ini­tial call, Row­ley post­ed to so­cial me­dia that he had con­tact­ed Cari­com Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ir­win La Rocque and Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Pa­tri­cia Scot­land, QC and for­mal­ly in­vit­ed them to send elec­tion ob­servers.

“How­ev­er, al­most two weeks lat­er, and with just 17 days to go to the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, we have heard noth­ing more of it,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that with the “height­ened lev­el of alert­ness af­ter the new lo­cal cas­es of COVID-19, the win­dow for the re­quired 14-day quar­an­tine pe­ri­od for ob­servers be­fore the elec­tion date is clos­ing.”

“The prime min­is­ter must act im­me­di­ate­ly to have these ob­servers here by this week­end so they can be cleared in time for the elec­tion,” she said.

“With the time quick­ly run­ning out, I am call­ing on the prime min­is­ter to act im­me­di­ate­ly to put the nec­es­sary arrange­ments in place and up­date the na­tion on this mat­ter.”

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Leza­ma-Lee-Sing said the prime min­is­ter had al­ready “...ad­dressed the is­sue frontal­ly and had pre­vi­ous­ly in­formed the pop­u­la­tion that a re­quest has gone out to Cari­com and to the Com­mon­wealth for ob­servers.”

How­ev­er, she not­ed that the PNM has al­ways “em­braced trans­paren­cy in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.”

“This is ev­i­dent in the man­ner in which we con­duct our own af­fairs, such as the one man one vote, and the man­ner in which our elec­toral can­di­dates are nom­i­nat­ed, screened and se­lect­ed,” Leza­ma Lee-Sing said.

“The PNM will not be in­duced in­to the histri­on­ic UNC’s des­per­ate grasps at rel­e­vance,” she added.