DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) leader Mick­ela Pan­day is be­ing chal­lenged by both the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to pro­vide ev­i­dence back­ing her claims of ha­rass­ment and in­tim­i­da­tion di­rect­ed at her can­di­dates ahead of the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Pan­day made the al­le­ga­tions on Sun­day, sug­gest­ing that the ha­rass­ment be­gan af­ter she an­nounced plans to con­test all seats. The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front field­ed can­di­dates for 37 out of 41 con­stituen­cies on nom­i­na­tion day, with the par­ty not con­test­ing the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Diego Mar­tin West, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, and Point Fortin seats—each cur­rent­ly held by the PNM.

She claimed the po­lit­i­cal ha­rass­ment led to the prospec­tive can­di­dates for the seats drop­ping out be­cause of safe­ty con­cerns.

PNM Po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley swift­ly re­ject­ed the claims yes­ter­day. He al­so ar­gued that such “un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ex­cus­es” dam­age the in­tegri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s free and fair elec­tions.

“Any­body who be­lieves that PNM is wor­ried or so con­cerned about the ar­rival of can­di­dates of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front in Diego Mar­tin and else­where, so much so, that such can­di­dates are no­ticed or ha­rassed, should have his or her head ex­am­ined.

“These un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed ex­cus­es do noth­ing more than cast un­war­rant­ed as­per­sions on our free and fair elec­tions, es­pe­cial­ly in the eyes of strangers who might on­ly re­ly on these ‘re­ports’ and may even take them se­ri­ous­ly enough to re­peat such con­cerns as re­al­i­ty.”

Row­ley al­so chal­lenged the me­dia to iden­ti­fy the can­di­dates who were al­leged­ly ha­rassed.

Mean­while, the UNC echoed Row­ley’s call for trans­paren­cy, as­sert­ing that for­mal re­ports should have been made to the po­lice and the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC).

“The fail­ure of any­body mak­ing these wild al­le­ga­tions to make a re­port to the po­lice or to pro­vide ev­i­dence sim­ply is po­lit­i­cal mis­chief. If there is a con­cern, there is pro­vi­sion in the law to treat with that,” UNC Chair­man Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo said.

“Any two-cent lawyer, any am­a­teur lawyer, any­body in fourth-year law school will be aware of that,” he added.

He said the UNC does not en­gage in such prac­tices, de­scrib­ing the par­ty as a pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists Prof Hamid Ghany and Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath both sug­gest­ed that it is dif­fi­cult to as­sess the cred­i­bil­i­ty of Pan­day’s claims with­out fur­ther de­tails.

“The state­ments are hang­ing out there. Per­haps there is a need for a lit­tle more meat on the bone to get to the bot­tom of this,” Ghany said. “If this has some se­ri­ous­ness to it, then you need, cer­tain­ly, fur­ther and bet­ter par­tic­u­lars.”

De­spite Pan­day’s an­nounce­ment of plans to file a for­mal com­plaint with the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, Ra­goonath, who chairs the coun­cil, said he had not re­ceived any for­mal re­ports up to yes­ter­day evening.

“If a com­plaint or claim is be­ing made and there’s no sup­port­ing ev­i­dence, the coun­cil will be un­able to de­lib­er­ate on such mat­ters,” Ra­goonath said. “It’s claims and coun­ter­claims,” he added.

He al­so not­ed the new chal­lenge the coun­cil faces with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, which makes it hard­er to ver­i­fy whether some of the pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence is gen­uine or AI-gen­er­at­ed.

At­tempts to con­tact Pan­day for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.