Kevon Felmine

De­feat­ed lead­er­ship can­di­date Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is chal­leng­ing the fair­ness of Sat­ur­day's Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in­ter­nal elec­tion, say­ing it was rid­dled with fraud and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

His claim came af­ter over a dozen blank bal­lot pa­pers were found on the bank of the Kat­wa­roo Dam in Pe­nal yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Mooni­lal, who led the Loy­al­ists team, there were al­so re­ports of peo­ple seen with bal­lot pa­pers out­side polling sta­tions in Cen­tral Trinidad, poor qual­i­ty ink which could be wiped off, mem­bers' names ap­pear­ing sev­er­al times on one list and in some cas­es the same names ap­pear­ing in sev­er­al con­stituen­cies. He said there were al­so in­stances where mem­bers were al­lowed to vote al­though their names were not on the vot­ers' list, while in some sta­tions mem­bers whose names were not on the list but had a par­ty card were not al­lowed to vote. Mooni­lal said his team al­so had a pho­to­graph of some­one re­mov­ing a bal­lot box from a polling sta­tion around 1 pm on Sat­ur­day, claim­ing that it was full and need­ed to be re­placed. He said spoilt bal­lots were count­ed in Fyz­abad.

"The over­all as­sess­ment is that it was not fair and it was not free. The list was ter­ri­bly in­ap­pro­pri­ate and that may have led to mass fraud," Mooni­lal told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

"I am not ar­gu­ing that if all of the de­fects were tak­en that we would have been suc­cess­ful. Maybe the re­sults would have been the same, but what this does is un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem, and re­gret­tably the per­sons who have won by this flawed process."

Dur­ing an in­ter­view last month, Mooni­lal had al­so raised con­cerns about the free­ness and fair­ness of the elec­tion, say­ing that a mem­ber of the elec­tion com­mit­tee had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a strat­e­gy meet­ing for re-elect­ed po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Al­though the mem­ber sub­se­quent­ly re­signed, he charged that sev­er­al of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's team mem­bers were pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers at the elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, he added, "We had very se­ri­ous con­cerns at a time, par­tic­u­lar­ly about the list. We were com­plain­ing for weeks about the lists, with sev­er­al peo­ple's names ap­pear­ing three and four times.

"On elec­tion day, when you con­nect the dots and the van­ish­ing ink, from ever since we have been in­volved in elec­tions in this coun­try, we have used a red ink that stays on your fin­ger for days, some­times weeks."Al­though he was un­de­cid­ed on whether court ac­tion would fol­low, he said his at­tor­neys were tak­ing state­ments from wit­ness­es.

He ac­knowl­edged Per­sad-Bisses­sar's vic­to­ry with over 15,000 votes, but ques­tioned whether the re­sult would have been the same if not for the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

"At this stage I can­not say whether or not we will em­bark on any court ac­tion, but cer­tain­ly the par­ty needs to take stock. We have to look at some of the state­ments we have from per­sons. You can on­ly take court ac­tion if you have the req­ui­site state­ments prop­er­ly done," he said.

"Court ac­tion can­not be on the ba­sis of hearsay, it must be done in the ba­sis of in­for­ma­tion that is pre­sent­ed by those per­sons who have wit­nessed wrong do­ing."

Mooni­lal al­so ques­tioned elec­tion com­mit­tee chair­man Ram­per­sad Parasam's claim that the ink used in the elec­tion was the same used by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. On Sat­ur­day, Mooni­lal demon­strat­ed how eas­i­ly the ink was re­moved from his fin­ger us­ing a "Wet Wipe."

Calls to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's phone yes­ter­day went unan­swered and she did not re­turn calls or mes­sages left.

Fu­ture un­cer­tain

As to his fu­ture re­la­tion­ship with Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Mooni­lal said he had worked with her dur­ing her time as prime min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader so noth­ing would change. He said he was al­so care­ful not to at­tack her dur­ing his cam­paign.

"I have worked with the Op­po­si­tion Leader be­fore as prime min­is­ter and short­ly as Op­po­si­tion Leader. Noth­ing will change and I was care­ful on the plat­form not to be at­tack­ing her. I have nev­er raised is­sues of per­son­al­i­ty, that is not my kind of pol­i­tics," he said.

"We gave a vi­sion and a pro­gramme for the par­ty. In a sense, the Op­po­si­tion leader, not with­stand­ing how un­fair the process was, has to con­tin­ue to pro­vide the lead­er­ship and I wish her the best with her new team."

Al­though he ex­pressed lit­tle con­fi­dence in the new ex­ec­u­tive, he said he would give his sup­port. As for his role in the par­ty, now that he is no longer an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber but con­tin­ues as the Oropouche East MP, he said, "I con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent my con­stituen­cy in Par­lia­ment. I con­tin­ue my par­lia­men­tary work. I have been in the par­ty for many years as an of­fi­cer, so that type of work will cease but I con­tin­ue to hold on as a UNC mem­ber and sup­port­er as much as I can.

"You have to give the new mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive, how­ev­er un­fair the process was to put them there, the space and the lat­i­tude to con­tribute as best they can. We don't have con­fi­dence in this new ex­ec­u­tive, but they have gone through a lot to be there and they must be giv­en the lat­i­tude to make a con­tri­bu­tion if that can."