Jesse Ramdeo & Sascha Wil­son

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day is call­ing for an over­haul of the ex­ist­ing process for fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, de­scrib­ing it as “ar­cha­ic.”

Pan­day, who had kept her cards close to her chest on which seat she was con­test­ing, made the com­ment as she filed nom­i­na­tion pa­pers yes­ter­day for Cou­va North, the con­stituen­cy her late fa­ther and for­mer prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, served for 34 years (1976-2010).

Af­ter com­plet­ing the al­most 30-minute-long nom­i­na­tion process, Pan­day - flanked by sev­er­al PF can­di­dates and for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Adesh Nanan, who served un­der the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion led by her late fa­ther- said the sys­tem need­ed re­vamp­ing. 

“Ar­cha­ic. Needs to mod­ernise a bit, that is why it takes so long, needs to use tech­nol­o­gy a bit more, needs to stan­dard­ise some forms so that no­body has prob­lems when they go to their in­di­vid­ual con­stituen­cies, easy peasy,” Pan­day said.

Al­most 50 years af­ter her fa­ther se­cured the con­stituen­cy for the Unit­ed Labour Front (ULF), Pan­day said she had what it takes to ad­dress the area’s con­cerns. 

“It is very emo­tion­al but it is not just about ho­n­our­ing a lega­cy, it is ush­er­ing a new era in­to pol­i­tics and for the peo­ple of Cou­va North to en­sure prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I know it is what he (Bas­deo Pan­day) would have want­ed. Cou­va North has been ne­glect­ed for a very long time and the coun­try has been ne­glect­ed for a very long time.”

Pan­day, who con­firmed her par­ty will be con­test­ing all 41 seats, al­so de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion to take a low-key ap­proach to fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers.

“It is not about me, it is about the peo­ple of Cou­va North and peo­ple all over the coun­try. You go in and do the busi­ness of the peo­ple and go. It al­so costs a lot of mon­ey and that mon­ey can be spent else­where that is need­ed more than for vain glo­ri­ous mat­ters.”

Pan­day al­so rub­bished claims that the PF was a “vot­er-split­ting par­ty.”

Padarath lodges com­plaint

Mean­while, UNC par­ty or­gan­is­er Bar­ry Padarath called on the EBC to re­move the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer for the Cou­va South con­stituen­cy. He made the call af­ter it took him about two hours to sub­mit his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers at the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTFA) Home of Foot­ball at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va. 

Padarath com­plained that this was due to is­sues with the lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ment and the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer’s im­prop­er in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the elec­tion rules.

He said, “I had to walk for two miles in the rain with my sup­port­ers. I was not al­lowed to go in with any ve­hi­cles et cetera. And that was a clear in­cor­rect in­ter­pre­ta­tion of elec­tion rules be­cause elec­tion rule says on elec­tion day, nom­i­na­tion day, et cetera, you have to stay 100 feet from where the process is be­ing com­plet­ed.”

How­ev­er, he claimed PNM can­di­date Aaron Mo­hammed and his sup­port­ers were al­lowed to dri­ve on­to the com­pound. 

He said, “I have no in­ter­est in ac­cept­ing any apol­o­gy from the chief elec­tion of­fi­cer. I think with a short elec­tion, a short elec­tion pe­ri­od of just three weeks ago, we need com­pe­tent, suit­able peo­ple who know what they are do­ing, who can in­ter­pret the elec­tion rules prop­er­ly and who can com­mu­ni­cate if they are un­aware to make a de­ci­sion at the spur of a mo­ment.”

He said the sit­u­a­tion was ev­i­dence that the re­turn­ing of­fi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are new, need more train­ing to en­sure the elec­tion process is done in a fair, ef­fi­cient trans­par­ent man­ner.”

He said the UNC’s at­tor­neys will be send­ing a let­ter to the EBC de­mand­ing the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer is re­moved, and a UNC team in­tends to meet with EBC of­fi­cials on Mon­day.

Con­tact­ed for a com­ment, EBC Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis said she had re­ceived a com­plaint from UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Ka­hai that Padarath’s sup­port­ers were not al­lowed on the com­pound. She said it was un­for­tu­nate Padarath en­coun­tered chal­lenges but said the EBC had no con­trol over the fa­cil­i­ty.

“The re­turn­ing of­fi­cer was none the wis­er of the chal­lenges that Mr Padarath was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­cause as he him­self in­di­cat­ed, the en­trance is some dis­tance away from where the ac­tu­al of­fice was, so she was deal­ing with can­di­dates while his sup­port­ers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing those chal­lenges.” 

Nar­cis said she con­tact­ed the Min­istry of Sport, who then con­tact­ed the TTFA to re­solve the is­sue. 

“I, of course, would have al­so ex­pressed my dis­plea­sure in terms of how he was treat­ed and how that en­tire process went,” she said.

How­ev­er, she said go­ing for­ward, the EBC would want to en­sure there is no re-oc­cur­rence.