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Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young met with the Chief of Mis­sion of the CARI­COM Elec­tion Ob­ser­va­tion Mis­sion (CEOM), Ian Hugh­es, and oth­er mem­bers of the ob­serv­er team at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Wednes­day, five days ahead of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

The eight-mem­ber CARI­COM team, led by Hugh­es—Su­per­vi­sor of Elec­tions in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da—has been in the coun­try since Mon­day and is ex­pect­ed to ob­serve all stages of the elec­toral process. Oth­er mem­bers in­clude se­nior elec­toral of­fi­cials from Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Haiti, Saint Lu­cia, and Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

In a state­ment is­sued by the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, Hugh­es said the team wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­port the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process in Trinidad and To­ba­go and was en­cour­aged by the lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion shown so far. “We ap­pre­ci­ate the warm wel­come and the ac­cess we have been giv­en to meet stake­hold­ers across the po­lit­i­cal spec­trum,” he said.