DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Fitzger­ald Hinds may not have the back­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Women’s League for the Laven­tille West Con­stituen­cy, but he is not out of the race as the par­ty’s po­ten­tial can­di­date for next year’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

A video that emerged last week showed the vot­ing process un­der­tak­en by the Laven­tille West Women’s League on Mon­day. In the one-minute clip, mem­bers were no­tably silent when asked if they would en­dorse the sit­ting MP as their can­di­date for the up­com­ing polls.

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, PNM stal­wart Mar­i­lyn Gor­don said de­spite the lack of sup­port from the Laven­tille West Women’s League, Hinds could still be se­lect­ed by the par­ty’s screen­ing com­mit­tee.

“The fact is that the Women’s League have not rec­om­mend­ed him, not nom­i­nat­ed him, but the oth­er units may. The Youth League may sup­port him or some­body else, some oth­er one of the par­ty groups, and there­fore he will be in the pool of peo­ple to go for­ward,” she said.

Gor­don, who served as Min­is­ter of Sport ex­plained the par­ty’s can­di­date se­lec­tion process, em­pha­sis­ing that it rep­re­sents the “broad­est form of democ­ra­cy”.

She high­light­ed that mul­ti­ple units ex­ist with­in a sin­gle con­stituen­cy and the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion al­lows for var­i­ous par­ty groups, in­clud­ing a Women’s League and a Youth League.

Gor­don ex­plained that each unit re­ceives ex­pres­sions of in­ter­est from in­di­vid­u­als wish­ing to present them­selves to the screen­ing com­mit­tee. Af­ter a vote, the units de­cide who to sup­port and this de­ci­sion is for­ward­ed to the con­stituen­cy sec­re­tary who con­venes a meet­ing to con­sid­er all nom­i­na­tions.

The con­stituen­cy group then con­ducts its screen­ing and rec­om­mends can­di­dates, with all in­ter­est­ed names sub­mit­ted to the PNM’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary and screen­ing com­mit­tee.

Gor­don ex­pressed the view that Mon­day’s video was not leaked but was an or­ches­trat­ed plot from with­in the par­ty.

“In my view, it was all stage man­aged and I know that ac­tion is go­ing to be tak­en be­cause peo­ple guard, very jeal­ous­ly, the in­ter­nal mech­a­nisms of the par­ty,” she said.

“It’s go­ing to be dealt with. It has to be dealt with, es­pe­cial­ly in these days of so­cial me­dia and the ac­tive plant­i­ng of moles and then you have the ex­am­ples go­ing on in the Unit­ed States of Don­ald Trump do­ing what­ev­er and you don’t want that kind of be­hav­iour down here,” she said.

For­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, who held the po­si­tion from 2010 to 2018, al­so be­lieves the video was a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to em­bar­rass Hinds.

“Nev­er in the his­to­ry of the PNM have I wit­nessed such a de­spi­ca­ble act by par­ty mem­bers and I am telling you, from what ap­peared on the video, you could see that was an arrange­ment and that is the sad part about it,” he said.

Ford ac­knowl­edged that Hinds could gar­ner sup­port from oth­er units but stressed that the back­ing of the Women’s League and Youth Arm is sig­nif­i­cant. He al­so ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the turnout for the elec­tion, de­scrib­ing it as “not very good. How­ev­er, his ma­jor is­sue was the shar­ing of that video.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed be­cause we have nev­er wit­nessed this in the PNM be­fore. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing and it is a strange de­vel­op­ment with­in the par­ty. I hope the lead­er­ship and con­stituen­cy hi­er­ar­chies ad­dress these sit­u­a­tions and pre­vent them from es­ca­lat­ing to oth­er con­stituen­cies, as it re­flects poor­ly and is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the PNM,” he said.

Chair­man of the Laven­tille West Women’s League Adan­na Grif­fith-Gor­don, who was seen in the video propos­ing a mo­tion for a vote on Hinds, re­leased a state­ment on Thurs­day con­demn­ing the unau­tho­rised cir­cu­la­tion of the clip.

She de­scribed the breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty as an af­front to the in­tegri­ty and val­ues of the League.

“The con­fi­den­tial­i­ty of our meet­ings is para­mount to en­sur­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where mem­bers can speak freely, de­lib­er­ate, and make de­ci­sions in the best in­ter­est of our com­mu­ni­ty and or­ga­ni­za­tion. The cir­cu­la­tion of this record­ing com­pro­mis­es that en­vi­ron­ment, erod­ing the very foun­da­tion of trust and re­spect up­on which our League op­er­ates,” she said.

Grif­fith-Gor­don said the League’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing process­es are meant to re­main in­ter­nal.

‘This unau­tho­rised shar­ing does not align with the way we con­duct our af­fairs. Such ac­tions on­ly serve to dis­rupt our uni­ty and dis­tract us from our goals at a cru­cial time for our League,” she said.

Fol­low­ing the video’s re­lease, the PNM’s Na­tion­al Women’s League high­light­ed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the vote and called for an­oth­er one to be held, with a new date, time, and lo­ca­tion to be de­ter­mined, en­sur­ing that all units are prop­er­ly no­ti­fied.