Kamla: Is there 'collusion' between PNM, EBC?

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has asked whether there is "collusion" between the People's National Movement (PNM) and the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to help the PNM win the next general election.

She was speaking to the media before a meeting at UNC headquarters in Chaguanas on December 12.

Persad-Bissessar based those comments on a newspaper report which claimed EBC chief elections officer Fern Narcis-Scope had said the commission should verify the voters' lists for 23 constituencies early next year and the commission faces challenges such as funding.

She recalled raising concerns about voter verification in the House of Representatives on December 9 during debate on the Draft EBC Order 2024.

Persad-Bissessar said, "I would like to ask – and I am always very suspicious when it comes to the EBC and this government – whether there is any collusion on the part of the government and the EBC to delay completing that field survey exercise so that they (PNM) could plant people in houses early in the next year or if they take the election down to November."

The next election is constitutionally due by August 2025, but under the law can be held
up to three months later (November 2025).

Persad-Bissessar claimed the PNM is "busy putting up homes."

She said when she asked about the voter verification exercise in the House on December 9, "The Prime Minister, as usual, went all over the world and back."

Persad-Bissessar asked who had remit over the EBC.

"Not for their independence, (but) to make sure that the EBC operates. It is the government."

Persad-Bissessar said if the EBC was saying it was not being funded, it worried her.

She claimed, without elaborating, if there was collusion between the PNM and EBC, "It would not be the first time."

On December 9, Rowley rejected Persad-Bissessar's claims that the PNM was trying to steal the election through recommendations the EBC had made in its March 13 report for changes to constituency boundaries.

He said the only valid point Persad-Bissessar had made was about the commission updating the voters' list to remove the names of dead people.

Rowley added that contrary to Persad-Bissessar's claims, a census could not be used to change a voters' list, because it only had numbers and not people's names.

The EBC had to physically search for individuals and put their names on the list.

"Somewhere in the proceedings, the EBC is taking the position that it is not taking names off the list because it is afraid of legal challenges."

Again contrary to Persad-Bissessar's claims, he continued, neither the cabinet nor the government has any list of people deleted from the EBC's voter list.

But, he said, "We need to have a serious conversation with the EBC on the whole question of how the list is cleaned up."

He recalled the PNM filed a motion on this issue in 2000 and it was subsequently learnt that 100,000 people's names had been removed from the list.

Rowley wondered if similar situations had happened since then but no one knew about it.