The CARICOM Observer Mission in this country for the General Election on Monday says they are not here to interfere with the electoral process, but shall be looking out for anything suspicious.
CARICOM has said their observer mission's final report would be shared with the Government, the Leader of the Opposition, and the Election and Boundaries Commission.
However, the Chief of the Mission says they will be presenting their preliminary findings to the media the day after the General Election.
00:00We simply report what we see. And if there is a need to flag anything that looks suspicious, then of course we would.
00:11Chief of Mission of the CARICOM Secretariat, Election Observer Mission, Ian Hughes, as he told the media that if the mission observes what he called malpractices that go outside of the remit of the law with regard to the general election in Trinidad and Tobago, they will be included in the recommendations in their final report.
00:29And it is hopefully made public so that those of you in the media will have access to that. So that's our remit. We are not there to interfere, but we will observe, we will ask questions based on what we see, but not questions that are going to be intrusive to come across as though we are interfering.
00:55The CARICOM Observer Mission had originally invited the media to a meeting at the Hilton Trinidad Hotel, but it turned into a media conference.
01:02There should be six teams moving throughout, five in Trinidad and there's a team in Tobago moving throughout the, well, as best we can, the length and breadth of all of the constituencies.
01:13As I said, east, west, north, south and central, within the time frame that's allotted for voting.
01:20And of course, staying for the count at the various locations.
01:26He said they are credited to observe activities and polling stations, but also to observe what is happening outside of them as well.
01:34As for Tobago in particular.
01:36I know we will be going to Tobago east. That's one of the areas that we were told that is a marginal.
01:44So we will visit there, but we will also visit Tobago west and of course as many of the polling stations.
01:55A question was posed to Mr. Hughes about a dossier the CARICOM Observer Mission received from the UNC during their meeting with the party on Tuesday.
02:04I would not want to be premature by making any statement that would be inaccurate.
02:12So we are taking our time to go through that dossier.
02:15And as I said, once we, by Tuesday of next week and we have our press conference,
02:25we would be in a position to make any sort of statement regarding that.
02:31The Office of the Prime Minister said Prime Minister Stuart Young met with the CARICOM Election Observer Team
02:37and separately with the Commonwealth Observer Group at the Diplomatic Center in St. Anne's on Wednesday.
02:44The Commonwealth Observer Group met with the UNC on Thursday.
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