DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The Laven­tille West Women’s League has of­fi­cial­ly rat­i­fied its de­ci­sion to se­lect Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion Al­der­man Ka­reem Mar­celle as its nom­i­nee to be screened for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

The vote by se­cret bal­lot took place at the Laven­tille West sub-con­stituen­cy of­fice of in­cum­bent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Fitzger­ald Hinds. The meet­ing was called for 5.30 pm, and the gates were closed be­fore 7 pm.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that 185 women at­tend­ed the vote, with Mar­celle re­ceiv­ing 106 votes, Hinds se­cur­ing 78, and Dr Kadelle Jes­samy re­ceiv­ing one vote.

This marks the sec­ond time the Laven­tille West Women’s League has held a vote to se­lect a can­di­date to rep­re­sent the con­stituen­cy. The first vote took place on Oc­to­ber 28, where Mar­celle gar­nered 38 votes, Hinds re­ceived one, and three mem­bers ab­stained. How­ev­er, that vote was an­nulled af­ter a video of the closed-door meet­ing was se­cret­ly filmed and shared on­line.

The one-minute video showed mem­bers of the League re­main­ing no­tably silent when the chair­per­son, Adan­na Grif­fith-Gor­don, re­peat­ed­ly asked if they would en­dorse the sit­ting MP, Fitzger­ald Hinds, as the par­ty’s can­di­date for the up­com­ing elec­tion. The video al­so high­light­ed that on­ly one mem­ber spoke in favour of Hinds.

A state­ment from Laven­tille West chair­man Richard Wal­cott lament­ed “cer­tain ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” in the vote and point­ed out that all units of the con­stituen­cy were not in­formed by due no­tice of the meet­ing.

“Fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate with the wider mem­ber­ship of the con­stituen­cy posed a se­ri­ous threat which un­der­mined the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry process and the democ­ra­cy that our par­ty is known for,” the state­ment had read.

Three days af­ter the video’s re­lease, Grif­fith-Gor­don is­sued a state­ment con­demn­ing the record­ing, call­ing it a “vi­o­la­tion of trust” and a “breach of con­fi­dence.” She em­pha­sised that the in­tegri­ty and val­ues of the League had been com­pro­mised by the cir­cu­la­tion of the video.

More­over, a What­sApp mes­sage pur­port­ed­ly from PNM La­dy Vice Chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is ad­dressed the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the record­ing and sub­se­quent shar­ing of the league’s con­fi­den­tial meet­ing on so­cial me­dia.

She al­so voiced her dis­com­fort with the “show of hands” method used for vot­ing, sug­gest­ing that it could un­der­mine the trans­paren­cy and fair­ness of the process. Robin­son-Reg­is called for a more se­cure and ac­count­able ap­proach to en­sure that the nom­i­na­tion process re­mains cred­i­ble and re­spects the trust of all in­volved.

Al­though Ka­reem Mar­celle was se­lect­ed by the Laven­tille West Women’s League, the favour of the PNM Youth League went to Fitzger­ald Hinds in a vote held on Sun­day. Hinds se­cured 18 votes, while Mar­celle ob­tained 14 votes and Jes­samy re­ceived one vote.

In the Laven­tille West Con­stituen­cy, there are 67 units, each con­sist­ing of 15 mem­bers. A can­di­date seek­ing to be con­sid­ered for screen­ing by the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive on­ly re­quires the sup­port of one unit to be sub­mit­ted for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Once a unit en­dors­es a can­di­date, their nom­i­na­tion is for­ward­ed to the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and the PNM’s screen­ing com­mit­tee for eval­u­a­tion and po­ten­tial ap­proval.