Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the post of So­cial Me­dia Of­fi­cer Dane Wil­son wants more trans­paren­cy in the up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Wil­son said that can­di­dates who are cam­paign­ing do not have ac­cess to the phone num­bers and oth­er con­tact in­for­ma­tion of the mem­ber­ship and the mem­ber­ship does not have ac­cess to the can­di­dates’ con­tact in­for­ma­tion which makes cam­paign­ing more dif­fi­cult.

PNM mem­bers are ex­pect­ed to vote for 35 of the 39 chal­lenged can­di­dates over three days: No­vem­ber 26 and 27 and De­cem­ber 4.

"We are in the one-man, one-vote era and based on Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s mod­erni­sa­tion of the par­ty and how we elect peo­ple, we can’t be re­sist­ing giv­ing phone num­bers of can­di­dates. We can’t have con­stituen­cy chair­per­sons not al­low­ing a can­di­date like my­self to call and ask for names and num­bers. I don’t have the fi­nan­cial re­sources to go out there and phys­i­cal­ly look for peo­ple house to house.

"If the Elec­tions Com­mit­tee does not want to give it, there should be a rule where a can­di­date presents him­self to a chair­per­son and signs a doc­u­ment say­ing that these peo­ple’s pri­vate in­for­ma­tion will not be mis­used."

He said Karen Nunez-Tesheira who is one of the can­di­dates for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader al­so spoke about the can­di­dates' lists and the im­por­tance of trans­paren­cy.

"The is­sue is there are no tele­phone num­bers with the list. The list con­tains names and ad­dress­es. The PNM by na­ture is re­served and con­ser­v­a­tive. In the last few years what hap­pened was the rev­e­la­tion of Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca, so the re­quest for phone num­bers and email ad­dress­es to reach out to peo­ple is im­por­tant. When the British polling firm Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca's strat­e­gy was em­ployed, peo­ple got up­set as they feared their per­son­al da­ta would be used. So while we want to mod­ernise the PNM, it is un­fair for can­di­dates not to be able to reach out to the mem­ber­ship via phone calls. Be­cause of that bo­gey­man called Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca, I could un­der­stand the par­ty is shy about giv­ing out that in­for­ma­tion."

Wil­son, a for­mer PNM youth of­fi­cer in 2009 dur­ing the Patrick Man­ning era, said he de­cid­ed to con­test the post of So­cial Me­dia Of­fi­cer which is cur­rent­ly held by Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture Avinash Singh be­cause "I was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of ear­ly PNM so­cial me­dia. I was the one who put the PNM on its first so­cial me­dia plat­form which was in Hi5 in 2003."