Renu­ka Singh

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) won the pop­u­lar vote in the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The par­ty earned 13, 062 votes more than the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial pre­lim­i­nary re­sults re­leased by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the EBC, the PNM earned a to­tal of 322, 250 votes while their clos­et com­peti­tor, the UNC, won 309,188 votes.

The PNM’s can­di­date for Arou­ca/Mal­oney, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, earned the most votes, gar­ner­ing 12,697. PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley earned sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, with some 10,791 votes to re­tain his seat in Diego Mar­tin West.

The can­di­date for Ch­agua­nas West un­der the UNC ban­ner, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, earned the most votes in the par­ty, gar­ner­ing some 15,502 to claim that seat. Ram­bal­ly even earned more votes than UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who amassed 13,487 votes.

Ini­tial counts had shown that the UNC amassed more votes than the PNM but just like the gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults in 2015, the EBC fig­ures show that was not the case on Mon­day.

The EBC fig­ures al­so show a marked de­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly vot­ed. In 2015, 734,792 peo­ple cast their bal­lots as com­pared to 658,297 who ex­er­cised their fran­chise this year. The EBC al­so re­ject­ed 1,775 bal­lots this year.

Back in 2015, 2,452 bal­lots were re­ject­ed.

When com­pared to 2015 vot­ing, both Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Row­ley earned less votes this time around.

Back in 2015, Per­sad-Bisses­sar won 14,896 votes while Row­ley won 12,855 votes for their re­spec­tive con­stituen­cies. This time around, Per­sad-Bisses­sar won 13,487 votes while Row­ley se­cured 10,791.

De­spite these fig­ures, the EBC is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in a re­count of five seats as re­quest­ed by the UNC. Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke con­ced­ed de­feat in To­ba­go East a short while af­ter the re­count he or­dered start­ed on Tues­day.

On Tues­day, UNC pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Ani­ta Haynes claimed said the elec­tion was fraught with ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in many con­stituen­cies. The par­ty called for a re­count in San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, To­co-San­gre Grande and La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro.

Haynes said the dis­par­i­ty in the fig­ures was cause for con­cern, not­ing the par­ty was shocked when Row­ley an­nounced vic­to­ry at the polls al­though the bal­lots were still be­ing count­ed. There can be no swear­ing-in of MPs un­til the mat­ter is re­solved.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day morn­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Row­ley said the UNC was de­lib­er­ate­ly de­lay­ing the swear­ing-in to push the nar­ra­tive that the new gov­ern­ment was il­le­git­i­mate. (See page 7)

Ac­cord­ing to the Con­sti­tu­tion, the last sworn-in Prime Min­is­ter re­mains in charge of the coun­try un­til a new swear­ing-in. Row­ley said that not be­ing able to swear-in a new Cab­i­net was hurt­ing the man­i­festo promis­es his par­ty had made.