Gail Alexan­der

There was a slight­ly bet­ter Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment in­ter­nal elec­tion turnout yes­ter­day - al­though the event was still af­fect­ed by rain.

How­ev­er, the PNM’s Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Team (EST) will meet by to­mor­row to re­view the two-day vot­ing ex­er­cise so far and will make any rec­om­men­da­tions, if that’s nec­es­sary.

The po­si­tion was giv­en by EST chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts by 4 pm yes­ter­day. Vot­ing was done in the 41 con­stituen­cies which had one polling sta­tion each.

The third and fi­nal day of vot­ing is on Sun­day (Dec 4) be­tween 1 pm and 4 pm at the Queens Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, as part of PNM’s 50th con­ven­tion.

The PNM’s mem­ber­ship is 105,894, it was con­firmed last week. Par­ty sources es­ti­mat­ed there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 vot­ers over the two-day ex­er­cise.

There was a low turnout for Sat­ur­day’s first day af­ter in­clement weath­er hit T&T.

With con­tin­u­ing rain yes­ter­day, as well as flood­ing and land­slides in sev­er­al ar­eas, yes­ter­day’s vot­er turnout, though still low, was bet­ter in some places than on Sat­ur­day.

At Mu­cu­rapo Girls’ RC Pri­ma­ry School, there were over 100 vot­ers up to around 2.45 pm. Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land vot­ed just be­fore 2 pm.

Port-of-Spain coun­cil­lors and PNM PoS North ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers vot­ed at Tran­quil­lit Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school, where hired maxi taxis brought some vot­ers.

Turnout was said to be high in the San Fer­nan­do ar­eas on both days. Min­is­ter in Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning vot­ed in South yes­ter­day. But north/east­ern and oth­er area were af­fect­ed by the weath­er.

EST chair­man Roberts said yes­ter­day, “(Vot­ing) has been a lit­tle bet­ter. I don’t have an av­er­age turnout fig­ure yet. We haven’t heard of peo­ple be­ing af­fect­ed by land­slides, but we know the con­stant rain would have af­fect­ed the sit­u­a­tion.”

On pos­si­ble con­tin­gen­cies to ac­com­mo­date num­bers who were un­able to vote dur­ing the two days, whether by way of ex­tend­ing vot­ing time on Sun­day or oth­er­wise, Roberts said, “We haven’t con­sid­ered that. We’re go­ing to meet by Wednes­day to re­view the vot­ing so far and how to pro­ceed.

“We’ll dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion and if we think there is need to make any rec­om­men­da­tion to the par­ty, we’ll do so there­after. At this point, I can’t say what rec­om­men­da­tion might be nec­es­sary.”

If any rec­om­men­da­tion is made, the par­ty will have to ex­am­ine it, take a de­ci­sion and ad­vise the EST.

The on­ly oth­er vot­ing is­sue, Roberts said, was a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple say­ing they couldn’t find their names on the vot­ers’ lists.

“But we were re­solv­ing that and the names were be­ing lo­cat­ed,” he said.

Boynes sup­ports ex­ten­sion

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal leader can­di­date Karen Nunez-Tesheira said if any­one is in the vot­ing line at Sun­day’s 4 pm dead­line, she didn’t ex­pect they’d be turned away.

On the turnout over the week­end, she said weath­er notwith­stand­ing, she wa con­cerned about whether poll cards, which in­form peo­ple where to vote, were dis­trib­uted as promised. She said she didn’t get one and was sent to vote in St Au­gus­tine al­though she lives in Port-of-Spain.

“If cards weren’t dis­trib­uted, it would have in­creased the com­plex­i­ty and cost of vot­ing,” Nunez-Tesheira said.

Ronald Boynes, al­so a can­di­date for leader, said rain af­fect­ed the East bad­ly again yes­ter­day.

Boynes added, “No re­quest has been made by my sup­port­ers for an ex­ten­sion. With hor­ren­dous weath­er in the east and north, the pri­ma­ry con­cern is the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of mem­bers and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. So, I sup­port an ex­ten­sion of vot­ing time at Sun­day’s con­ven­tion.”

Boynes said the three-day vot­ing process made the par­ty elec­tion more vi­able.

“As we es­ti­mat­ed, an av­er­age of on­ly about 3,000 vot­ers turned out last Sat­ur­day,” he said.

Boynes said he’d had no is­sue with hav­ing the elec­tion over three days and his on­ly con­cern had been about bal­lot box se­cu­ri­ty.