Gail Alexan­der

Com­plaints of prob­lems in yes­ter­day’s UNC in­ter­nal elec­tion came from both in­cum­bent Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Star team and chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath’s Lo­tus team.

Dr John Bharath, fa­ther of chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath, said he was un­able to vote as his name wasn’t on the vot­ing list.

Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety head Dhanoo Sookoo al­so queried why her name wasn’t on the vot­ing list. She was re­cent­ly screened by the PNM among To­co/San­gre Grande gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nees and was re­ject­ed. Her prob­lem yes­ter­day was brought to Guardian Me­dia’s at­ten­tion by Bharath’s camp.

Long lines of vot­ers were re­port­ed at the UNC’s 78 polling sta­tions from 8 am.

UNC elec­tions chair­man Ramesh Per­sad-Ma­haraj said there was a “fair­ly strong” turnout.

He con­firmed can­vass­ing was the main prob­lem note yes­ter­day and peo­ple gen­er­al­ly, who vi­o­lat­ed rules were be­ing warned. He said can­vass­ing wasn’t al­lowed by any can­di­date or team since it was an ac­cept­ed norm that this wasn’t done on an elec­tion day. He con­firmed Bharath’s team was warned against can­vass­ing, in­clud­ing on the ra­dio.

Ahead of yes­ter­day’s vot­ing, prob­lems arose since last Sat­ur­day af­ter a fake let­ter to mem­bers was cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia that day er­ro­neous­ly claim­ing in­cum­bent leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar was sup­port­ing chal­lenger Bharath and an ac­com­mo­da­tion had been reached. The fake doc­u­ment was on a UNC let­ter­head.

Voters check for their names at the Couva South Mock Station opposite the Exchange Presbyterian School.

SHASTRI BOODAN

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s team is­sued a de­nial that night—and she em­pha­sised it yes­ter­day.

She said the let­ter was com­plete­ly fake and ap­peared “to be cre­at­ed” by per­sons at­tempt­ing to con­fuse yes­ter­day’s vot­ers.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added there was no ac­com­mo­da­tion and “This let­ter is noth­ing more than a last-minute dis­trac­tion meant to cre­ate anx­i­ety in the minds of our mem­bers in the hopes Mr Bharath might gain a few more votes.”

MP Dave Tan­coo who was on her slate, re­lat­ed an in­ci­dent at the Aranguez polling sta­tion where Bharath was warned by Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s team that he couldn’t wear a jer­sey with his sym­bol since he was cam­paign­ing.

Tan­coo claimed Lo­tus team can­di­dates, Lar­ry Lal­la, Ja­son Pe­ru, Ra­mona Ram­di­al and Kami­ni Ram­raj over­stayed the ten-minute pe­ri­od that can­di­dates were al­lowed to be in polling sta­tions.

Tan­coo who said can­vass­ing was al­so done by mi­cro­phones, ac­cused op­po­nents of us­ing “a dis­gust­ing dis­play of tac­tics”.

Guardian Me­dia was told Sookoo’s name wasn’t on the vot­ing list as she didn’t meet UNC con­sti­tu­tion cri­te­ria since she was re­cent­ly screened by PNM.

Bharath said there were many ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

“We have re­ports 15 peo­ple who were al­lowed to vote and their names weren’t on the vot­ers’ list. Peo­ple called po­lice to try to re­move our can­di­date’s car from the car park in Lengua.”

His team is­sued a video of his fa­ther Dr John Bharath, for­mer St Au­gus­tine MP, say­ing his name wasn’t on the vot­ing life where he usu­al­ly vot­ed at Tu­na­puna Hin­du school though he was a life­time mem­ber, hold­ing card 0001. He said he as­sumed his card was the first UNC had is­sued.

Dr Bharath said an of­fi­cial at UNC’s head of­fice apolo­get­i­cal­ly told him his name wasn’t on the list of those record­ed as life­time mem­bers. Bharath said he was al­so told at El Do­ra­do vot­ing sta­tion that his name wasn’t on the list.

Team Lotus leader Vasant Bharat speaks with Guardian Media.

SHASTRI BOODAN

On the al­ter­ca­tion at Aranguez polling sta­tion, chal­lenger Bharath re­spond­ed, “The elec­tion rules don’t state that peo­ple can’t can­vass or cam­paign or wear their jer­seys to­day and we’re abid­ing by the rules.”

He slammed “gut­ter pol­i­tics by peo­ple in­clud­ing coun­cil­lors” who’d com­plained.

Bharath said the “fake” let­ter cir­cu­lat­ed last Sat­ur­day wasn’t is­sued by him or his team, “We know our op­po­nents made ‘ad­min­is­tra­tive er­rors’ in the past. We trust this wasn’t an­oth­er such in­stance on their part. We con­demn vile ac­tions from those try­ing to tar­nish our cam­paign.”

De­vant Ma­haraj claimed MPs Van­dana Mo­hit and Michelle Ben­jamin were evict­ed from sta­tions since they had no au­tho­ri­sa­tion let­ters to be there.

At 5 pm Ma­haraj who said vot­er turnout was low, added, many didn’t get to vote—in­clud­ing Dr Bharat Bas­saw, who was told his name wasn’t on the list.