Pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures from yes­ter­day’s Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion showed in­cum­bent UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar with a very healthy lead trend­ing ahead of her chal­lenger Dr Fuad Khan.

Her Star team was al­so ex­pect­ed to be back in charge of the UNC fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s in­ter­nal elec­tion where in­cum­bents, chal­lengers and UNC’s elec­tion team all con­firmed there was a low vot­er turnout

As a re­sult of the out­come, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ex­pect­ed home Thurs­day, will be re­turn­ing to con­tin­ue the po­lit­i­cal bat­tle with his Op­po­si­tion op­po­nent.

Vot­ing be­gan at 8 am and end­ed at 6 pm. Rains be­gan af­ter 9 am through­out T&T.

Checks with sev­er­al polling sta­tions last night in­di­cat­ed Per­sad- Bisses­sar well ahead of Khan for the lead­er­ship.

Her Star team in­cum­bents Don Sylvester (for elec­tions of­fi­cer) and Ravi Rati­ram (par­ty or­gan­is­er) were al­so ahead of re­spec­tive chal­lengers Ra­mona Ram­di­al and Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh.

The three posts were the on­ly ones con­test­ed since Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s Star team took the oth­er 15 posts un­op­posed.

At 8 pm UNC elec­tion team chair­man Ramesh Per­sad-Ma­haraj stat­ed that on­ly fig­ures from San Fer­nan­do East were in so far due to rain and flood­ing - and the trend in­di­cat­ed Per­sad- Bisses­sar was win­ning.

Bal­lot box­es were still be­ing col­lect­ed late last night. Count­ing was pro­ject­ed to be done very late in­to the night. Per­sad- Ma­haraj said of­fi­cial re­sults would be giv­en to­day, Mon­day.

Per­sad- Ma­haraj said there were some mi­nor com­plaints which were dealt with in­clud­ing false al­le­ga­tions.

Pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures from San Fer­nan­do West of­fi­cials showed the Star team in the lead for the three posts, but bet­ter fig­ures for the three chal­lengers than ex­pect­ed.

“Mas­sive vic­to­ry” - Kam­la pro­ject­ed

Speak­ing in South when she vot­ed at noon yes­ter­day, Per­sad- Bisses­sar said she thought at the end of the day there’d be a “mas­sive vic­to­ry” for all on her slate.

She didn’t pro­nounce on the low turnout but ven­tured that apart from the rain, on­ly three posts were be­ing chal­lenged and she felt that might have been a fac­tor.

At 8.30 pm un­op­posed chair­man Dave Tan­coo said vot­ing was slow due to rains and re­sults were trick­ling in. He said the trend was “ex­cep­tion­al­ly heav­i­ly in Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s favour and the Star team’s.”

Tan­coo said the chal­lengers’ loss was “pre­dictable.” He said late yes­ter­day light­ning struck caus­ing a loss of pow­er to the Na­pari­ma vot­ing sta­tion and pow­er was on­ly just re­stored.

The new Na­tex team’s term is un­til 2024. Per­sad- Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship is un­til 2025- the ex­pect­ed gen­er­al elec­tion pe­ri­od.

Much like in the UNC’s 2020 in­ter­nal elec­tions, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 120,000 peo­ple were el­i­gi­ble yes­ter­day to vote at 78 polling sta­tions around T&T’s 41 con­stituen­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on Wikipedia, the UNC’s 2020 Na­tex poll had the low­est vot­er turnout for any UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion with on­ly 17,066 mem­bers out of 120,000 plus mem­bers com­ing out. Per­sad-Bisses­sar in 2020 blamed the low turnout on the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. UNC’s 2017 in­ter­nal elec­tion was al­so record­ed to have had “the low­est” vot­er turnout.

The Na­tex poll was orig­i­nal­ly due in De­cem­ber and the lead­er­ship poll in 2023. But the in­ter­nal elec­tion was be­ing held ahead of an ex­pect­ed Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion by year’s-end.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Star Team slate in 2020 de­feat­ed lead­er­ship chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath’s Team Lo­tus. She won the lead­er­ship with 87.15 per cent of the 17,066 votes cast (14,873 votes). Bharath ob­tained 12.85 per cent (2,193).