Non-voters have no faith in 2 big parties

Historically, voter turnout for local government elections is low. The exact numbers will be revealed by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) in the near future.

However, there is a common assumption that young people are not engaged in the electoral process, but the EBC does not give disaggregated data on voter turnout based on age, leaving it impossible to know the age of voters or if the youth demographic was less engaged than the rest of the voter population.

This was confirmed by Bobbi Rogers, manager of corporate communication at the EBC.

Newsday turned to its Facebook community to find out why they did not vote.

JC Henry, 28, is a marketer and lives in the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation area. He believes the PNM won in his area, but is not 100 per cent certain. (It did win.)

Asked why he did not vote, he said: "I don't believe in the main parties."

For the ten years he's been eligible to vote, he hasn't seen any change in them.

"I think the majority of young people feel that way about the PNM or UNC from the posts I've been seeing."

He said former prime minister Patrick Manning had a vision and a plan, but he hasn't seen that in the other party leaders.

Tracy Ann Nurse, her mother and four sisters did not vote. Nurse is a 31-year-old administrator from San Fernando.

She said she had not seen representatives from either the PNM or UNC in the area.

"We believe the current government has lost touch with the people, to actually address our concerns as a community.You only see these people once it's election time."

She said her previous councillor, who was from the UNC, did nothing for them, yet wanted their vote.

"The idea of voting for the 'lesser of the evils' didn't sit well with us.

"It is our democratic right to vote, but it is also (our) choice not to, seeing that with each changing government and leadership is the same issue."

Richie Mohammed, 39, a contracting services owner in Cunupia, did not vote because he does not believe fully in the democratic process.

"(There are) two parties: party A and party B. We vote for party A and want change, so we vote for party B.

"Here comes the weird part, in order to get rid of party B we have no choice but to vote for party A – again."

He said parties come and go, and even presidents change, but the flawed system of governance does not change.