An­na-Lisa Paul

For­mer sen­a­tor Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid is urg­ing reg­is­tered vot­ers for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) in­ter­nal elec­tion to­mor­row to do the right thing and se­lect him as the par­ty's chair­man.

In a state­ment thank­ing his sup­port­ers for stand­ing with him and for dis­play­ing in­tegri­ty, ho­n­our and dig­ni­ty along the cam­paign trail, Ab­dul-Hamid said, "Our in­ter­nal elec­tion serves to con­firm that the par­ty be­longs to you the mem­ber­ship and not to any nar­row group of elites lurk­ing in the back­ground."

He ac­knowl­edged that dur­ing the cam­paign, "there have been oc­ca­sions where the words of on­ly a few in­di­vid­u­als have not been ex­em­plary."

How­ev­er, he said his elec­tion team had man­aged not to at­tract a sin­gle blem­ish or com­pro­mise it­self, whilst main­tain­ing the high­est stan­dards the mem­bers had come to ex­pect and de­serve.

"We are pleased to have ex­hib­it­ed the loy­al­ty and dis­ci­pline re­quired of the pre­mier po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion in the re­gion," he said.

Ab­dul-Hamid is run­ning against cur­rent Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who is on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's Team Red Row­ley slate. The cur­rent chair­man is Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Franklin Khan, who de­clined to con­test the post due to health rea­sons.

Ab­dul-Hamid said al­though his char­ac­ter had come un­der at­tack dur­ing the cam­paign, he re­fused to re­spond in kind.

He said, "I have said not one neg­a­tive or un­kind word against any of those who have en­gaged in per­son­al at­tacks against me, and I do not pro­pose to do so now."

But he re­mind­ed per­sons that "such bizarre and un­usu­al be­hav­iour on­ly serves to hurt and bring the par­ty in­to dis­re­pute."

The hope­ful can­di­date im­plored the elec­torate to act re­spon­si­bly to­mor­row.

"The par­ty de­serves a ma­ture and sta­ble chair­man who cares about the mem­bers and who can el­e­vate the con­ver­sa­tion and in­spire the peo­ple."

Re­in­forc­ing his suit­abil­i­ty, Ab­dul-Hamid pledged, "I pro­pose my­self as a man of the peo­ple and I be­lieve you de­serve a peo­ple's chair­man. One who is truth­ful, ap­proach­able, car­ing, hon­est, de­cent and con­nect­ed to the or­di­nary, hum­ble mem­bers; some­one who knows how to talk to peo­ple and even more im­por­tant­ly, some­one who knows how to lis­ten."