Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Gen­er­al Coun­cil meets in spe­cial ses­sion to­day to dis­cuss a pro­posed date for its in­ter­nal elec­tion. Par­ty sources say the date of June 25 is un­der heavy con­sid­er­a­tion.

The lead­er­ship of five peo­ple an­nounced at the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing af­ter they met on Mon­day. They al­so agreed that all 16 PNM ex­ec­u­tive posts, in­clud­ing po­lit­i­cal leader, will be con­test­ed in the in­ter­nal elec­tion us­ing the one-man-one vote sys­tem.

An elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee will be es­tab­lished by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil to­day to man­age the con­duct of the elec­tion, in­clud­ing re­view and is­suance of the fi­nal elec­toral list and a code of ethics for the elec­tion.

The PNM’s last ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion in 2022 was held over three days, No­vem­ber 26, 27 and De­cem­ber 4. Then-PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley won re-elec­tion against con­tenders Karen Nunez-Tesheira, Ju­nior Bar­rack and Ronald Boynes. Nine­ty-two per cent of vot­ers showed con­fi­dence in Row­ley as their leader. He ob­tained 8,424 votes while the near­est chal­lenger, Nunez-Tesheira, re­ceived 345 votes, while Boynes and Bar­rack ob­tained 243 votes and 99 re­spec­tive­ly. There was a low vot­er turnout, with 9,111 out of 105,894 el­i­gi­ble par­ty mem­bers vot­ing.

Sev­er­al in­cum­bent of­fi­cers—and for­mer ones—have ex­pressed in­ter­est in con­test­ing the up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tion.

On the ex­pect­ed par­ty elec­tion, for­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, who said no­body would op­pose Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les for the par­ty’s lead­er­ship post, main­tained the view that the pe­ri­od to have the elec­tion in June was too short. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, he said the team han­dling the or­gan­i­sa­tion will “have their work cut out for them to do it in six weeks be­cause it’s a lot of work to or­gan­ise such an elec­tion in­ter­nal­ly.”

Ford al­so cit­ed is­sues hang­ing over the PNM’s head, in­clud­ing his view that the lead­er­ship could not de­ny there was no con­sul­ta­tion with the PNM’s 13 elect­ed MPs in a sit-down meet­ing to choose the Op­po­si­tion Leader, “And that will nev­er go away—they’ve nev­er ex­plained why they used that clan­des­tine ap­proach on this is­sue.”

Mean­while, the names of three de­feat­ed PNM can­di­dates—Fos­ter Cum­mings, Faris Al-Rawi and Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis—have been heard in con­nec­tion with PNM’s six Sen­ate posts, which were be­ing fi­nalised this week ahead of next Fri­day’s open­ing of the new Par­lia­ment term. Names for var­i­ous bench­es were to have been com­plet­ed by yes­ter­day.

PNM in­sid­ers said a “lot of lob­by­ing is go­ing on” for Sen­ate posts.

The names of for­mer Min­is­ters Has­sel Bac­chus of To­ba­go, Dr Amery Browne and par­ty re­searcher Vi­ash Nand­lal are al­so be­ing called. Up to re­cent­ly, there were al­so un­con­firmed re­ports that in­ter­ven­tion was be­ing made for for­mer UNC mem­bers Lar­ry Lal­la, SC, and for­mer Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne to be part of the Sen­ate team.

Ford al­so re­peat­ed his opin­ion that based on prin­ci­ple, de­feat­ed can­di­dates should not be ap­point­ed Sen­a­tors.