The Move­ment for Change main­tained their mo­men­tum on Sun­day with re­sound­ing vic­to­ries over their ri­vals Friends of Crick­et in the Na­tion­al League and Cen­tral Zone elec­tions held at the Na­tion­al Crick­et Cen­tre in Bal­main, Cou­va. It was the third straight elec­tion tri­umph for the Az­im Bas­sarath led Move­ment for Change fol­low­ing their 5-1 sweep in Sat­ur­day's North Zone elec­tions to se­lect rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing of the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive at the end of Oc­to­ber. Move­ment for Change can­di­dates swept both elec­tions by 6-0 mar­gins with­in hours of each oth­er which in­di­cat­ed that the group will be hard to un­seat as it seeks an­oth­er two-year term of of­fice.

The suc­cess­ful slate was led by co-founder of the Move­ment for Change Patrick Ram­per­sad who polled 47 votes, the high­est cast for any can­di­date. How­ev­er this ho­n­our al­so went to lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor Bri­an Julien and hard­work­ing sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al League Anil Ka­mal. Not far be­hind on the Move­ment for Change band­wag­on was T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the WI Crick­et Board Dr Allen Sam­my (46), for­mer Test and T&T open­ing bats­man Su­ruj Ra­goonath and the lone woman in the fray, Neera Mo­han (45) rep­re­sent­ing Pow­er­Gen Sports Club. A to­tal of 38 clubs were reg­is­tered for Sun­day's elec­tions but the ac­tu­al num­ber of vot­ers was re­duced to 76 af­ter Youth Sports of the North East Zone was de­barred from vot­ing pend­ing the out­come of a protest lodged in a dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ter against Uni­ty.

Con­cern was raised by Jef­frey Guillen rep­re­sent­ing Queen's Park and Richard Ramkissoon of SIS Cen­tral Sports that the cor­rect pro­ce­dure may not have been prop­er­ly fol­lowed af­ter the an­nounce­ment of the award on Fri­day of cham­pi­onship ho­n­ours to Youth Sports over front run­ners Uni­ty. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the T&T Crick­et Board Ar­joon Sam­lal ac­ced­ed to the urg­ing of Guillen and Ramkissoon and af­ter hold­ing cau­cus with T&TCB first vice-pres­i­dent Dud­nath Ramkissoon and Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer at­tor­ney-at-law Lennox Sankers­ingh, it was de­cid­ed to sus­pend the vot­ing rights of the North East rep­re­sen­ta­tives pend­ing the out­come of the mat­ter.

The oth­er con­tentious is­sue to come up be­fore the ac­tu­al vot­ed was tak­en in­volved To­ba­go Club Cav­a­liers whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives were de­barred from vot­ing be­cause as Ar­joon ex­plained, they were no longer part of the Na­tion­al League fol­low­ing the re­struc­tur­ing of the top lev­el of the lo­cal game for the 2011 to 2012 sea­son. To­ba­go of­fi­cials at a meet­ing ear­li­er this year with the T&T Crick­et Board de­cid­ed not to field a team in the Pre­mier­ship com­pe­ti­tion fear­ing it would be­come a fi­nan­cial bur­den and they pledged in­stead to con­cen­trate on de­vel­op­ing the game on the is­land.Moses Thomas, Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the To­ba­go Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion and a mem­ber of Cav­a­liers tried in vain to have his ar­gu­ment gain trac­tion but Ram­lal point­ed that the T&TCB could not make any de­ci­sion on the mat­ter be­cause they were in re­ceipt of a let­ter from an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the club.

"The Crick­et Board has re­spond­ed to the let­ter and any de­ci­sion to be tak­en will be done in­volv­ing the le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both par­ties. In the mean­time the elec­tions must pro­ceed," said a stern Ram­lal.

The Cen­tral Zone elec­tions pre­ceed­ed the Na­tion­al League at the ad­join­ing Sir Frank Wor­rell De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre and and re­sult­ed in a 6-0 thump­ing by the Move­ment for Change can­di­dates. Long-serv­ing crick­et coach and ad­min­is­tra­tor Lal­man Kow­elssar led the way with 24 votes. Among the oth­er suc­cess­ful can­di­dates were Hadeed Ali (24 votes), Avi­nesh Jag­ger­nauth (24); Kei­th Joseph (28), Ra­jin­dra Poorai (23) and An­der­son Ram­dath (24). By their vic­to­ry, the of­fi­cials earn the right to rep­re­sent the Cen­tral Aone in the 20011 to 20013 sea­sons.

Fol­low­ing their beat­ing in the North Zone on Sun­day, the Friends of Crick­et fared no bet­ter south of the Ca­roni Rover as their slate could not muster the req­ui­site sup­port to up­set the favourites Move­ment for Change whose qui­et cam­paign has reaped rich div­i­dends in the past few days. The un­suc­cess­ful can­di­dates Friends of crick­et can­di­dates in the Cen­tral Zone elec­tions were Farouk Ghany (22), Mulchan Lewis (22), Amardeo Lutch­man (22) Brent Mor­gan (21), and Al­lan Ran­jass (22). Af­ter the elec­tions Kow­lessar, who is the sec­ond vice-pres­i­dent of the T&T Crick­et Board said he was pleased with the way the ex­er­cise was com­plet­ed but was not sur­prised by the over­whelm­ing sup­port shown to the Move­ment of Change. "A lot of work has been ac­com­plished over the past two years of the Az­im Bas­sarath ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Move­ment for Change elec­tion cam­paign has been based on truth and de­cen­cy so we are con­fi­dent of vic­to­ry all the way," said an ob­vi­ous­ly pleased Kow­lessar.