Sascha Wil­son

In­cum­bent deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says a bo­gus mem­ber­ship list was used at some polling sta­tions yes­ter­day to turn away sup­port­ers. Mooni­lal re­vealed this at the Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School af­ter cast­ing his vote along with San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray.

Mooni­lal and Coudray fought the deputy po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion un­der Mooni­lal's Na­tion­al­ist slate. Speak­ing with re­porters, Mooni­lal said: "There are per­sons who are al­leged to be rep­re­sent­ing can­di­dates and they are at the gates of these polling sta­tions and turn­ing away peo­ple if they be­lieve some­one is not their sup­port­er. They turn them away and they hold up a piece of pa­per in their hand and they say you are not on the list you can go home."

He ad­vised vot­ers to on­ly ac­cept the of­fi­cial word from the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer, polling agent or elec­tion agent. The Hous­ing Min­is­ter said he re­ceived re­port of such a sit­u­a­tion at Aranguez. Mooni­lal, who did not put up a can­di­date for the po­si­tion of chair­man held by Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, said he vot­ed for the per­son he thought was best able to be chair­man of the par­ty at this time.

De­scrib­ing the par­ty cam­paign as a skir­mish rather than a bat­tle, he said: "I am clear that we would work with every­one that would be elect­ed by the end of the day." How­ev­er, he said: "We are very con­fi­dent that the Na­tion­al­ist slate will be re­turned over­whelm­ing­ly by the end of the day."