PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Long lines and reg­is­tra­tion headaches for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s in­ter­nal elec­tion have strength­ened po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ re­solve to mod­ernise the par­ty.

Beck­les made the promise yes­ter­day, hav­ing her­self stood in long lines to vote in Ari­ma yes­ter­day. She told re­porters that it was clear the process need­ed to be up­dat­ed.

Say­ing the lines had been con­sis­tent­ly long from as ear­ly as 8 am, Beck­les said, “So the main con­cern is the length of time peo­ple are tak­ing to vote. That’s the main con­cern, you know. And you know some of the peo­ple not on the list, those are things that you have from time to time. They had put things in place be­cause the con­ven­tion re­al­ly should have been last year. But un­for­tu­nate­ly, some peo­ple wait­ed un­til to­day,” Beck­les said af­ter wait­ing over an hour in line af­ter ar­riv­ing at the Ari­ma Boys’ Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School short­ly af­ter 11 am.

She ex­plained that there were sev­er­al mem­bers who were turned away from vot­ing af­ter lists showed they were not up-to-date mem­bers de­spite their claims.

“One of the main frus­tra­tions, as well as the mod­erni­sa­tion of the par­ty, so that peo­ple can stay at home, you can ap­ply your mem­ber­ship, you can pay your dues on­line, and you can do so eas­i­ly so you don’t want to come to­day to vote and find out you’re not a mem­ber,” she said.

The vot­ing process was al­so slow at the Bel­mont Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre when the Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day.

Beck­les said the elec­tion process had shown var­i­ous as­pects that could be im­proved up­on. How­ev­er, she brushed aside crit­i­cism raised by some se­nior mem­bers con­cern­ing mud­sling­ing in the cam­paign ahead of yes­ter­day’s poll.

“Ide­al­ly, for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that is 70 years old and we have been around for a long time, I mean, peo­ple do want what you call a smooth elec­tion with, you know, no mud­sling­ing and a num­ber of oth­er things. I don’t think there has been any mud­sling­ing, but I know that some peo­ple have cam­paigned a lit­tle more ag­gres­sive­ly than oth­ers,” she said.

Oth­er mem­bers of Beck­les’ slate, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Dr Amery Browne, said the elec­tion bat­tle was mere­ly part of the heal­ing process.

Gads­by-Dol­ly, the St Ann’s East MP, said, “I think the health of the PNM is quite good. We have seen this year in Op­po­si­tion, I think the high­est num­ber of con­tenders for po­si­tions with­in the par­ty, and I think that’s a very good sign. Al­so, quite a num­ber of them are young peo­ple. So, I think that bodes very well for the PNM and the health of the PNM, and we are look­ing for­ward to an ex­ec­u­tive that con­tin­ues the work of re­build­ing.

“Go­ing in­to op­po­si­tion is al­ways dif­fi­cult. There’s al­ways go­ing to be, you know, the grief on the blood­let­ting. That’s a part of it. We’ve gone through this process be­fore. The PNM is not new to this, and we have re­cov­ered very well be­fore, and we look for­ward to that same lev­el of re­cov­ery.”

She said the cam­paign­ing raised no rea­son for un­due con­cern.

Mean­while, speak­ing at the Bel­mont Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Browne said, “None of this is any­thing new. We’ve had ro­bust in­ter­nal elec­tions be­fore, es­pe­cial­ly since the era of one man one vote. There have been vig­or­ous ex­changes be­tween var­i­ous sides, slates, et cetera. So, it’s noth­ing new. And so, I don’t want to re­spond to any of the com­men­tary that has re­cent­ly oc­curred. But you know, let’s let good sense pre­vail. There’s democ­ra­cy with­in the par­ty. Let’s count the bal­lots and have a re­sult and move on to­geth­er, as we al­ways have as a na­tion­al move­ment.”