Ameen, Scotland spar over EBC voter ‘errors’

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kadi­jah Ameen says an in­ter­min­is­te­r­i­al team met with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) on names the team flagged in the EBC’s 14th re­port - and the EBC sub­se­quent­ly found 29 er­rors - but Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Kei­th Scot­land has said the meet­ings vi­o­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Both spoke in yes­ter­day’s de­bate on a mo­tion re­gardin a draft or­der based on the EBC’s 14th re­port, which was passed.

Ameen said EBC’s re­port was sub­mit­ted to the min­istry on Au­gust 29, 2025, and was ac­com­pa­nied by an er­ra­ta sheet which showed 29 er­rors aris­ing from is­sues raised by the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team with the EBC.

She said when she first re­ceived the EBC’s re­port, there were a num­ber of ar­eas of con­cern. She said the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team ex­pressed this to the EBC and she com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the EBC’s chief elec­tions of­fi­cer.

On No­vem­ber 3, the team met the EBC, which not­ed the con­cerns. Ameen said the team had a list of 414 names flagged be­cause in the re­port, they were sub­ject to be re­lo­cat­ed, which con­cerned the team. She said the EBC cit­ed chal­lenges in To­ba­go and rur­al Trinidad ar­eas, such as vague ad­dress­es used.

The EBC sub­se­quent­ly did an au­dit iden­ti­fy­ing “la­tent mis­reg­u­la­tions aris­ing from un­clear street nam­ing and in­con­sis­tent ad­dress in­for­ma­tion” in sev­er­al elec­toral dis­tricts.

The com­mis­sion did field in­ves­ti­ga­tions to as­cer­tain elec­tors’ pre­cise res­i­den­tial lo­ca­tions and the re­port and er­ra­ta sheet were pro­duced.

Ameen said the er­ra­ta sheet was aimed at en­sur­ing the ac­cu­ra­cy of fig­ures used for EBC’s analy­sis.

“This is a mat­ter of se­ri­ous con­cern! How in the past, af­ter so many years of do­ing this, the EBC could sub­mit a re­port to the min­is­ter and if as a Gov­ern­ment we weren’t vig­i­lant, these 29 er­rors would have nev­er been iden­ti­fied!” she added

Ameen said scruti­ny will al­so be done by the team on even num­bers of mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty dis­tricts.

Con­clud­ing de­bate in re­ply­ing to Scot­land, she said the PNM’s past min­is­ter held a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­port for a year un­til the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress threat­ened le­gal ac­tion.

Scot­land: Why did min­istry hide EBC re­port?

PNM’s Scot­land slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s lay­ing of the re­port at the “11th hour.” He said un­less dealt with be­fore mid­night last night, it would have no ef­fect for the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls.

De­mand­ing the pub­lic be told why it hadn’t been laid in Par­lia­ment when re­ceived on Au­gust, Scot­land said all the meet­ings/con­sul­ta­tions Ameen’s team had were in con­tra­ven­tion of Sec­tion 72:3 of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“All that was done be­fore the lay­ing of the re­port could have been done af­ter lay­ing it ... This mo­tion came like a thief in the night, just like the radar in To­ba­go! We had mere hours’ no­tice, they felt they’d catch us with our pants down, but PNM’s like Boy Scouts - al­ways ready!” Scot­land added.

He queried why the re­port couldn’t have been raised in the 10 Par­lia­ment sit­tings since Au­gust, es­pe­cial­ly when Ameen al­lud­ed to trans­paren­cy. He not­ed such re­ports were to be laid at the ear­li­er op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ter re­ceipt from EBC.

Scot­land said he hoped the To­ba­go MPs were “on the radar” par­tic­i­pat­ing in meet­ings.

“To­bag­o­ni­ans - be wary, as this dis­re­spect met­ed out to you will come again!” he added, say­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans need­ed to know why the re­port was “hid­den.”

Scot­land called for ex­pla­na­tions re­gard­ing parts of the re­port, in­clud­ing why two dis­tricts’ names were changed when on­ly one polling di­vi­sion was trans­ferred and oth­er ar­eas with larg­er de­mo­graph­ic shifts had no re­nam­ing. He queried in­con­sis­tent ap­pli­ca­tion of the nam­ing method­ol­o­gy and “se­lec­tive ap­proach” for the two seats.

Scot­land added that no oth­er To­ba­go ar­eas were giv­en di­rec­tion­al de­f­i­n­i­tion like “North” and “South.” He ques­tioned why the name “Ba­co­let” was re­moved though the area re­mains ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly.

“In all the min­is­ter’s ‘con­sul­ta­tions’ these points nev­er arose? What were they dis­cussing? Maybe if we were in­vit­ed to these ‘con­sul­ta­tions’ we could have raised these is­sues,” he added.