Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion will take place next Mon­day - Bud­get Day - in­stead of the ini­tial­ly an­nounced Oc­to­ber 15 date.

The pre­vi­ous date to elect a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive was stat­ed in Au­gust. On Mon­day, PNM elec­tions of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram said the date was re­cent­ly changed from Oc­to­ber 15 to Oc­to­ber 12 since the venue for the elec­tion - Pleas­antville Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre - was not avail­able for the day first an­nounced.

Paras­ram said that sub­se­quent to the par­ty's an­nounce­ment of the new date in­ter­nal­ly, Oc­to­ber 12 was al­so an­nounced by the Gov­ern­ment last Thurs­day as the date for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 Bud­get.

"But de­spite that, we ex­pect no prob­lems or fall-off in vot­ing. The SFE elec­tion is 6 pm, so all sys­tems are go,” Paras­ram added.

On con­tenders for posts on the SFE ex­ec­u­tive, it's yet to be con­firmed if Hazel Man­ning - moth­er of SFE MP Bri­an Man­ning - will in­deed con­test the post of con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

Dur­ing the height of the re­cent clash be­tween the MP and for­mer SFE chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is, Man­ning had of­fered her­self to serve as chair­man. She is the wid­ow of for­mer long­stand­ing SFE MP and prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning.

How­ev­er, it was con­firmed re­cent­ly that her of­fer was meant to have been a tem­po­rary chair­man­ship on an in­ter­im team while the is­sues in SFE were sort­ed out. The idea of an in­ter­im team was, how­ev­er, re­ject­ed by the par­ty af­ter the SFE ex­ec­u­tive re­signed fol­low­ing the Alex­is-Man­ning clash­es and SFE con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions were called by PNM's lead­er­ship.

On Mon­day, MP Man­ning said the de­ci­sion on a fi­nal team to con­test for ex­ec­u­tive posts hasn't been de­cid­ed yet, in­clud­ing whether his moth­er would still con­test. An an­nounce­ment will be made clos­er to Mon­day's elec­tion day, he added.

At last Sat­ur­day's SFE Women's League elec­tion, PNM na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said in­cum­bent chair­man Ivy Pred­die was vot­ed back in with 90 votes. Rox­anne George, who al­so con­test­ed, re­ceived 29 votes.

For­mer se­nior SFE mem­bers last Sun­day ex­pressed con­cern about the sit­u­a­tion in the con­stituen­cy and stressed the need for new faces and en­er­gy on the ex­ec­u­tive. They cit­ed al­leged con­tract award is­sues raised by Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee in Par­lia­ment two weeks ago, nam­ing Alex­is and oth­er com­pa­nies. They called for sta­bil­i­ty in the con­stituen­cy unit, in­clud­ing for MP Man­ning to have prop­er ex­ec­u­tive sup­port: "...In what is a very, very tough po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion for the PNM in up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions fol­low­ing Gov­ern­ment's planned Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment changes and leg­is­la­tion," the mem­bers added.