Gail Alexan­der

A very wor­ri­some sit­u­a­tion. This is the view of for­mer PNM min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira af­ter the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (ESC) con­firmed sev­er­al sit­u­a­tions about the num­ber of bal­lot pam­phlets be­ing used in to­day's in­ter­nal elec­tions.

She and her team had ex­pressed con­cern about this re­cent­ly, claim­ing the sit­u­a­tion with the num­bers could cause the se­cre­cy of peo­ple's votes to be com­pro­mised and ex­pose them to pos­si­ble vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

Nunez-Tesheira is con­test­ing the post of po­lit­i­cal leader. It's the fi­nal day of vot­ing af­ter last week­end's ini­tial two days of polling. This takes place at Sun­day's 50th PNM con­ven­tion at the Grand Stand, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Vot­ing is from 8 am to 1 pm.

The con­ven­tion will be called to or­der at 10 am and in­cludes an ad­dress by out­go­ing PNM chair­man Colm Im­bert. Re­sults and ad­dress­es by oth­er par­ty of­fi­cials–in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley–will be giv­en this evening.

Nunez-Tesheira is con­test­ing against Row­ley. She is vot­ing to­day as is the oth­er lead­er­ship can­di­date Ju­nior Bar­rack. An­oth­er lead­er­ship can­di­date Ronald Boynes vot­ed last week Sat­ur­day.

Nunez-Tesheira's team spoke about the bal­lot pam­phlet is­sue at a brief­ing last week. At­tor­ney Pe­ter Tay­lor sent PNM ESC chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts a No­vem­ber 30 let­ter that the team had been in­un­dat­ed with com­plaints from peo­ple who vot­ed on No­vem­ber 26 and 27.

Tay­lor said those vot­ers al­leged that the num­ber which they were giv­en by the polling agent up­on en­try in­to the polling sta­tion was re­tained and al­so was placed in­to the bal­lot box with that per­son’s elec­tion book­let "there­by com­pro­mis­ing the prin­ci­ple of anonymi­ty and se­cre­cy up­on which the in­ter­nal elec­tion is pred­i­cat­ed."

Tay­lor had asked Roberts to an­swer the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

a. Up­on the polling clerk con­firm­ing that the po­ten­tial vot­er was on the elec­toral list, was a num­ber is­sued to said vot­er and writ­ten next to their name on the elec­toral list, and there­after that vot­er’s name was then crossed out evinc­ing that such per­son at­tend­ed the polling sta­tion and was ac­cept­ed to cast their bal­lot?

b. was the said num­ber which was record­ed on the elec­toral list next to the vot­er’s name, al­so writ­ten on the bal­lot book that was giv­en to the vot­er to ex­er­cise his or her fran­chise for the can­di­date of his or her choice such that by way of ex­am­ple- vot­er # 50 at polling sta­tion Num­ber ***67 on No­vem­ber 26 2022, was # 50 al­so writ­ten on the bal­lot book is­sued to the vot­er?

c. If your an­swer to (b) above was in the af­fir­ma­tive, does the #50 make its way in­to the bal­lot box along with the bal­lot book is­sued to vot­er #50?"

Re­ply­ing to Tay­lor last Fri­day, Roberts' let­ter stat­ed that " the aver­ments" made in para­graphs a, b and c of Tay­lor's cor­re­spon­dence were ac­cu­rate.

On Sat­ur­day, Nunez-Tesheira said that based on the un­der­stand­ing of the process it made for an un­com­fort­able sense and seems to fly in the face of democ­ra­cy, vot­ing and all that the PNM stood for. "If that's how the process is, one may as well put up your hand, vote and be iden­ti­fied as vot­ing for X or Y."

She ques­tioned why the num­ber on bal­lot pam­phlets would be want­ed, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for name trac­ing.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 34 can­di­dates are con­test­ing 12 PNM ex­ec­u­tive posts for a four-year term. The fol­low­ing posts were un­op­posed: la­dy vice chair­man (Camille Robin­son-Reg­is), gen­er­al sec­re­tary (Fos­ter Cum­mings), PRO (Faris Al-Rawi), and Youth of­fi­cer (Je­niece Scott). The ESC con­firmed 9,088 turned out to vote last week­end. The PNM has a mem­ber­ship of 105, 894.