AIL ALEXAN­DER

Af­ter Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes re­ject­ed the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty's re­quest for post­pone­ment of the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the par­ty has again asked the Pres­i­dent to re­con­sid­er af­ter yes­ter­day's news of eight more COVID-19 cas­es.

PEP wrote the Pres­i­dent two days ago to seek a post­pone­ment af­ter Min­istry of Health au­thor­i­ties alert­ed the na­tion to a new phase of COVID-19 spread since last week.

But af­ter be­ing re­ject­ed on that ini­tial re­quest, PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der, not­ing that eight more cas­es were re­vealed yes­ter­day, wrote the Pres­i­dent yes­ter­day, say­ing: "Your Ex­cel­len­cy, in your re­sponse to our re­quest for a post­pone­ment of the gen­er­al elec­tions cur­rent­ly un­der­way, where we stat­ed clear­ly that the elec­tions will put our peo­ple's lives at risk, you sug­gest­ed that noth­ing much has changed since the procla­ma­tion of Le­gal No­tice 34, but Your Ex­cel­len­cy, to­day's star­tling news alone should prompt you to again re­con­sid­er.

"If we fail in our du­ty to the stark re­al­i­ties be­fore us, we risk putting mass­es of peo­ple in dan­ger. We in the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty take the step here of ap­peal­ing your re­sponse and your de­ci­sion and urge you to re­con­sid­er."

At the last vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said they were not yet con­sid­er­ing shut­ting down the coun­try again as they did when the virus first reached these shores in March. How­ev­er, he said they may con­sid­er tar­get­ed and strate­gic lock­downs of busi­ness and places ex­posed to the virus.

Not­ing the spike in lo­calised cas­es yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Alexan­der added, "Again, the rea­sons for post­pon­ing are that the very cam­paign­ing for the elec­tions is it­self cre­at­ing a path­way for the ex­ac­er­ba­tion of com­mu­ni­ty spread, but polling day will put the peo­ple to a risk since that procla­ma­tion was read un­her­ald­ed in our his­to­ry, where over a mil­lion peo­ple will be mo­bilised over the course of twelve hours to con­fined spaces that can­not phys­i­cal­ly be sani­tised in the time­frame pro­vid­ed for an elec­tion, and will put them and every oth­er per­son they come in­to con­tact with at risk.

"We ap­pre­ci­ate your prompt re­sponse, and ask you again on the pub­lic record to re­con­sid­er."