ELECTION observers will not be in Trinidad and Tobago for the August 10 general elections but the country and its voting process will still be under scrutiny.
This is according to PNM political leader and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, as he spoke at a virtual meeting in Tunapuna on Wednesday night.
In early July, he had sent a letter to CARICOM and the Commonwealth Secretariat requesting observers but because of financial constraints coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic, they were unable to grant the request.
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Rowley had indicated that they were trying to access funding for at least one observer team to be here, but that did not happen.
Addressing a handful of supporters, he said, “The CARICOM has said to us that they could not raise enough people, they could only have raised three people and they didn’t think that three people could do any monitoring.
“They needed about a dozen and they therefore declined the offer to come to TT.”
“But they’re not worried about us, they aren’t worried because they know we conduct elections in TT free from fear and free and fair. They know that we could not have funded the arrangements to bring them here even if we wanted to because you can’t hire your own judge to adjudicate your own case so we asked a couple of other nations to help with funding they too had difficulty assisting the secretariats to help because they had other kinds of issues,” he added.
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He made it clear, “The bottom line is we are going to have our elections without observers as we’ve done before and I could tell you it wouldn’t be like nobody watching us.”
Rowley insisted, “You know every single commonwealth entity that exists in TT, that Ambassador reports back home on a daily basis. You’d be amazed at what they report on back to their home…capitals and they will all be here in T&T observing.”
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