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  • 1 year ago
PM BERATES EBC FOR DEAD PPL ON VOTERS LIST
The Prime Minister has invited CARICOM to send observers for the 2025 election... and the Elections and Boundaries Commission came in for a bashing from the PM over dead people being on the voters list and what has been described as "ancestral voting".
Transcript
00:00As the House debated and accepted the recommendations of the Elections and Boundaries Commission
00:06Order 2024, the Prime Minister announced that CARICOM observers will be in Trinidad and
00:11Tobago for the upcoming General Election.
00:35Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley says he's not entertaining any other observer entity.
01:03Dr Rowley was at the time winding up debate on the EBC report which was eventually passed.
01:10The Prime Minister expressed displeasure over the sanitisation or lack of sanitisation on
01:15the list of electors.
01:17The last survey done by the EBC, he says, was some 24 years ago.
01:35Additionally, the Prime Minister says electors who have moved residences were not being reassigned
02:01to their new electoral districts.
02:27As it relates to the renaming of seats, the Prime Minister had some suggestions, like
02:31incorporating the name Rio Claro into the Mayaro seat's name.
02:36Before the 2020 election, he said a request was made for the adjustment, but the EBC said
02:42That request came in too late.
03:12Dr Rowley also suggested that the Siparia constituency should be renamed Siparia Debe,
03:21and Pointer Pier should not be removed from the soon-to-be Claxton Bay seat.
03:27We find it a little curious or unhelpful that by just moving one polling division, the entire
03:35name of the constituency has changed, and it's now called Claxton Bay.
03:41I don't know, Madam Speaker, I have not consulted the EBC on this matter, but being familiar
03:48with the constituencies and the populations, I don't know what would have caused the EBC
03:55to think that the community of Pointer Pier should disappear from the name of this constituency.
04:03The opposition leader was the only one to contribute to the debate.
04:07I don't know when and where and how, I don't even know if the Prime Minister is going back
04:12or he's not going back, he didn't tell us that today, but we are reading a lot of things
04:15in the newspapers.
04:17We are ready, and the point is the people are ready and willing, the time will come,
04:22and the people eagerly are waiting to vote you out of office.
04:27And as it relates to the Prime Minister's proposition that the EBC order be amended
04:31to change the names of constituencies, Besant Besasa says in all the years she has been
04:36in Parliament, that has never happened.
04:38And in any event, there's a process for amendments.
04:41If the Prime Minister is coming now to say let's make changes, let's modify the report,
04:47which I am not going to agree to today, I am not agreeing to changing this report, one
04:51because there's a process.
04:52And if you want to change the report with respect to naming, there are far more important
04:58things contained in this report that need to be changed.
05:01Her party, she says, is not happy with the way the EBC has redistributed polling divisions.
05:07Do you know right on the border of Western East San Fernando is what?
05:12Oropuch East and Oropuch West.
05:14Why is it?
05:15And again the EBC gives us no reasons that we never take from Oropuch East or West to
05:22put in San Fernando West.
05:23We always take it from where?
05:24From San Fernando East.
05:25Why?
05:26I mean, you know what?
05:27This is a PNM waterbed, using your words.
05:32The package comes from a strong PNM seat into a marginal PNM seat.
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