Daily Express

THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER FOR TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

IT is completely unacceptable it took all of two days after the general election for the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to release the preliminary results of Monday's general election. Those results should have been released by Tuesday evening at the latest, and the EBC needs to explain why they were delayed.

Logic would suggest the delay had nothing to do with the request for a recount of votes in five constituencies since the basis for a recount is the dissatisfaction of a political party or candidate with the EBC's preliminary results. Before proceeding to any recount, the EBC's first responsibility was to count the votes and release its tally to the public. There are no ifs and buts about that.

We are both mystified and disturbed by the EBC's lack of presence during this critical post-election period and cannot imagine why chairman Mark Ramkerrysingh and Chief Elections Officer Fern Narcis-Scope, both attorneys, believe it is alright to say nothing officially to the electorate for all of this time. If there is a problem, they should step forward and say so; if there is any other explanation, it should be shared with the public.

In the absence of preliminary results and official statements from the EBC, political parties and social media have filled the information gap, sometimes inventing their own regulations and delivering news. Yesterday it was all abuzz with recount statistics seemingly fed by candidates to party propagandists. This is exactly what T&T does not need: members of the public filling the information vacuum created by the EBC's silence.

When the dust has settled on Election 2020, there should be a full enquiry into the EBC's conduct of this poll, which has been marked by a woeful lack of communication with the public and errors that speak to a certain operational shoddiness and absence of management oversight. The EBC has been guilty of publishing the wrong name of one political party and the wrong symbol for another, and it has been lethargic when faced with the need for prompt response to online mischief. In an age where so much of the public's engagement with each other and with public institutions is conducted online, the EBC has virtually no social media presence, with its last Facebook posts being over three years old.

As the institution charged with conducting an exercise that is vital to our democracy, the EBC must pitch for a high standard of excellence if it is to enjoy public trust. What the public has seen this past week is a slow, unresponsive bureaucracy that seems out of touch with the public's expectations and needs.

Thankfully, the people of Trinidad and Tobago have been patient and accommodating and have been busying themselves with other matters while awaiting the delivery of results from the EBC's clunking machinery.

If results could have been delivered on a timely basis decades ago, there is no reason in the 21st century for such a lengthy delay in releasing results. The EBC owes the public a full explanation for this.