General secretary of the Independent Liberal Party (ILP) Indra Maharaj has written to the Elections and Boundaries Commission’s (EBC) Chief Elections Officer Ramesh Nanan to officially complain about the conduct of one of its returning officers and to establish whether one of their nominees may still be eligible to contest the September 7 election.
The letter comes two days after the ILP’s nominee for Tabaquite Hayden Borrell was barred from filing nomination papers on Monday by returning officer Carol Dyal. Dyal claimed Borrell failed to arrive within the time specified to do so, arriving some seven minutes after the 3 pm deadline. The ILP has challenged her timing, contending that Borrell was on the premises three minutes before the deadline and that the process was already in train and should have been continued.
A letter signed by Maharaj and dated August 18 was dispatched to Nanan at the EBC Port-of-Spain office yesterday. In the letter the ILP formally expressed their concerns and lack of confidence in Dyal in her capacity as the returning officer for the electoral district of Tabaquite.
“Due to the actions of Ms Carol Dyal, taken on nomination day, the ILP does not have a candidate registered to contest this Electoral District in the September 7 general election and therefore questions of confidence or lack thereof in the ordinarily impartial nature of a Returning Officer have been raised and are now a public matter,” Maharaj wrote.
The ILP has accused Dyal of bias in her decision because two ILP aldermen in the Couva-Tabaquite-Talparo Regional Corporation (CTTRC), where she sits as the chief executive officer (CEO), have openly questioned her performance as the accounting officer over the past 21 months.