Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Can­vass­ing was tak­ing place by “all sides in all con­stituen­cies” dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in­ter­nal elec­tion.

There were wide­spread con­cerns about mem­bers’ names miss­ing from the fi­nal list but be­ing al­lowed to vote, bal­lot pa­pers were re­plen­ished in cer­tain ar­eas - and the elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee (ESC) dis­qual­i­fied a Laven­tille coun­cil­lor’s vote af­ter the per­son went out­side of the vot­ing booth area with his bal­lot pa­per in his hand.

These were some of the is­sues con­firmed by Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee chair­man Richard Wal­cott at the end of yes­ter­day’s in­ter­nal elec­tion process. Wal­cott and a team of rov­ing ESC of­fi­cers toured polling sta­tions in­spect­ing pro­ceed­ings through­out the day.

Re­ports of can­vass­ing start­ed ear­ly in Ari­ma, Barataria and oth­er ar­eas.

Wal­cott lat­er con­firmed that can­vass­ing took place in all con­stituen­cies.

“We had to speak to peo­ple all over. In Trinci­ty, one of our agents - whose face wasn’t recog­nised - was giv­en a list of peo­ple to vote for as he ar­rived,” Wal­cott said.

The ESC al­so had to deal with a Laven­tille coun­cil­lor who went out­side with his bal­lot book in hand. Wal­cott said the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer and se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer sub­se­quent­ly took the bal­lot book from the man and spoke with the ESC’s at­tor­neys.

“He was un­able to vote; his vote wasn’t reg­is­tered, since one isn’t al­lowed to step out of the room where the bal­lot box is with your bal­lot book in your hand,” he added.

The coun­cil­lor in­volved didn’t re­ply to What­sApp queries about the sit­u­a­tion. How­ev­er, sources claimed the man went out­side to see to his ail­ing 81-year-old moth­er ‘s trans­port, hadn’t spo­ken to any­one about vot­ing, and made an “hon­est mis­take” but didn’t quar­rel about not be­ing able to vote. His ac­tion was, how­ev­er slammed by some PN­Mites.

Yes­ter­day’s biggest com­plaint in­volved vot­ers’ names miss­ing from the fi­nal vot­ers’ list but be­ing al­lowed to vote af­ter checks with “Bal­isi­er House.”

Chair­man can­di­date Chin­ua Al­leyne for­mal­ly com­plained that per­sons whose names didn’t ap­pear on the fi­nal fist pro­vid­ed by the ESC to can­di­dates were per­mit­ted to vote by pre­sid­ing of­fi­cers at sev­er­al polling sta­tions.

He said that fol­lowed “ver­i­fi­ca­tion” of their mem­ber­ship/el­i­gi­bil­i­ty on some oth­er mem­ber­ship list “... that has not been made avail­able to me or to sev­er­al oth­er in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates.”

“This prac­tice ap­pears to be in breach of the elec­tion guide­lines. There’s no mech­a­nism that al­lows for this to le­git­i­mate­ly oc­cur,” he said.

Elec­tions of­fi­cer can­di­date San­jiv Bood­hu sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the ESC about per­sons be­ing added to lists in sev­er­al con­stituen­cies, fol­low­ing tele­phone calls made by polling sta­tion staff to Bal­isi­er House.

Can­di­date Hillary Bernard al­so queried per­sons be­ing added for La Hor­quet­ta vot­ing af­ter the deputy pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer called Bal­isi­er House and “was told by a per­son there” to add the two to the list and al­low them to vote.

Wal­cott said the is­sue oc­curred over all ar­eas.

“If names were miss­ing, polling sta­tion of­fi­cers would have checked Bal­isi­er House staff - who nor­mal­ly han­dle these mat­ters in every elec­tion - to see if per­sons were on the sys­tem there, and if found, they’d have been al­lowed to vote. In­cum­bent can­di­dates were not in­volved in the process.”

Wal­cott said bal­lot books were re­plen­ished in To­co and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la where there was in­suf­fi­cient.

For­mer PoS South chair­man Wen­dell Stephens added, “Long­stand­ing mem­bers in my par­ty group were not on the vot­ing list, they were told. One is our PG’s sec­re­tary who’s a mem­ber for eight years. I en­quired about oth­er names and they’re not there ei­ther. They re­ferred her to Bal­isi­er House but she went home.”

A West­ern res­i­dent at the PoS sta­tion said he couldn’t vote since his name wasn’t on the list. He said he’d vot­ed in the 2022 in­ter­nal elec­tions but was told his name wasn’t list­ed and “to check Bal­isi­er House.”

He too went home in­stead.