FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Tabaquite Anita Haynes debated over whether or not there was "a pop-up initiative" conducted by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) before the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) election on December 7, 2021. The Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) defeated the PNM 14-1 in that election.
As the Standing Finance Committee of the House of Representatives met on Friday to approve various supplementary allocations to different entities, Imbert indicated that part of a $23,525,000, included funding for pop-up initiatives by the EBC.
The commission began this initiative two years ago due to the covid19 pandemic. Due to public health regulations to reduce the spread of covid19, Imbert said there was a backlog of people who needed to get their id cards renewed at the EBC's offices throughout TT.
[caption id="attachment_954679" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Finance Minister Colm Imbert. -[/caption]
To reduce this backlog, he continued, the EBC is going directly into communities. This would involve the commission using facilities such as community centres as locations where people who need to renew their id cards can do so. He said this was a preferred option to people coming to the EBC's offices to do their id renewal through an appointment system. 'That is what the pop-up initiative is all about."
To date, the EBC has done pop-ups in Arima/Piarco, San Fernando, Penal/Debe and Chaguanas. Imbert advised Barataria/San Juan MP Saddam Hosein the commission will be doing a pop-up soon in San Juan.
He explained the initiative covers registration areas. These areas are not limited to a single electoral constituency. Persad-Bissessar and Haynes insisted that a pop-up initiative happened before last year's THA election. Imbert replied, "There was no pop-up initiative in the THA election. I don't know what you're talking about." Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George appealed for order as Persad-Bissessar continued to argue with Imbert.
Haynes claimed the EBC put out a statement saying there was a pop-up before the THA election. Imbert reiterated this was false. She then claimed documents which MPs received before the meeting, showed there was a pop-up in Tobago. Imbert was surprised that opposition MPs did not understand the English language.
Referring to the same documents that Haynes did, Imbert said. "There is a semi-colon. Are you not seeing the semi-colon? Do you know what the meaning of a semi-colon is?"
Imbert explained what that meant.
"There is a separate item. What it says, if you look at it very, very carefully, it (document) says 'to facilitate payment to media houses for advertisements with respect to the registration pop-up initiative; the recently concluded THA election and the local government by-election (Debe South)."
Due to the location of the semi-colon in the sentence, Imbert said, "There is no relationship between the first item (pop-up initiative)
