Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (ESC) chair­man Richard Wal­cott, says the dead­line for queries about the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship list for its up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tion has been ex­tend­ed to this af­ter­noon.

The dead­line was orig­i­nal­ly set for yes­ter­day.

The fi­nal list should be ready by Wednes­day.

The PNM’s in­ter­nal poll is sched­uled to take place on June 22. Re­sults will be giv­en that night.

The mem­ber­ship lists were re­leased to con­stituen­cies from Tues­day to Thurs­day with yes­ter­day as the dead­line to raise queries.

Wal­cott said the dead­line to lodge queries was ex­tend­ed in or­der to deal with any ques­tions about the list.

He added, “We’ve ex­tend­ed the dead­line from 4 pm on Fri­day (yes­ter­day) to 2 pm on Sat­ur­day (to­day) to clear up queries. We can’t go lat­er than that as we’ll need to rec­ti­fy any­thing that may need to be ad­dressed. We aim to have the fi­nal list avail­able by Wednes­day com­ing.”

Yes­ter­day, the can­di­date for gen­er­al sec­re­tary Roger Boynes com­plained of var­i­ous is­sues: ad­di­tion­al vot­ers’ names were in­cor­po­rat­ed and spread through­out the list mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to de­tect, names of sev­er­al de­ceased added to it, some who don’t be­long to re­spec­tive ar­eas were placed on the list, some par­ty groups and long-stand­ing mem­bers were struck off (such as the Cu­mu­to chair­man )and there were no con­tact email ad­dress­es or phone num­bers of mem­bers.

Boynes said con­stituen­cies were “to­tal­ly an­gry at this naked at­tempt to stack the list to help one side and pre­vent oth­ers lob­by­ing mem­bers.”

Ear­li­er in the week, Wal­cott ad­dressed sev­er­al as­pects of the process when the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons slate voiced con­cerns. Wal­cott’s state­ments in­clud­ed that the ESC com­mit­tee nev­er shared phone or email con­tacts.

Mean­while, can­di­date for chair­man, Port-of-Sain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne, re­cent­ly wrote PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings seek­ing an of­fi­cial copy of the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­ber­ship list fol­low­ing the re­cent May 6 spe­cial coun­cil meet­ing to fill the va­can­cies of chair­man and vice-chair­man on PNM’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Al­leyne not­ed that on­go­ing dis­course al­leged that Dr Amery Browne and for­mer MP Roger Mon­roe were “im­prop­er­ly per­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pate in the elec­toral process as vot­ers since Browne’s coun­cil mem­ber­ship, as a leg­isla­tive group Sen­ate rep­re­sen­ta­tive, ceased af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion de­feat. He al­so not­ed Mon­roe was nev­er elect­ed to the coun­cil as the leg­isla­tive group rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Low­er House since de­ceased MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian was the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Al­leyne quot­ed PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion on leg­isla­tive group sta­tus end­ing with elec­tion de­feat.

Al­leyne re­quest­ed the list of all bonafide coun­cil mem­bers of May 6, a copy of the reg­is­ter/sign-in sheet used to record the at­ten­dance of all for that meet­ing and a copy of Cum­mings’ reg­is­ter where he reg­is­tered 123 el­i­gi­ble vot­ers for the meet­ing. Al­leyne said as a can­di­date in the par­ty’s elec­tion, he was “en­joined to en­sure that the process and the over­all con­duct of the elec­tion was free and fair.”

Cum­mings didn’t re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on Al­leyne’s con­cerns.