Renu­ka Singh

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in­ter­nal elec­tions will be held on May 18.Par­ty chair­man Franklin Khan made the an­nounce­ment af­ter yes­ter­day's gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Wood­brook, adding that this is the first in­ter­nal elec­tions to utilise the 'one man, one vote' sys­tem and not the orig­i­nal del­e­gate sys­tem."Putting this one man, one vote elec­tion in place will take some ef­fort, it will take some time. It is some­thing new to the PNM mem­ber­ship, and it calls for a lot of in­fra­struc­ture to be put in place," Khan said.

Khan, flanked by PNM pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, said the par­ty was al­ready "in elec­tion mode."This elec­tion is ex­pect­ed to pit PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley against long­time mem­ber and for­mer sen­a­tor Pene­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who has hint­ed that she would try for the post. Khan, Ford and Al-Rawi did not say who would con­test the en­tire slate, but each said they would vie for the posts they hold now.

The fi­nal list of con­tenders, Khan said, would on­ly be known at the close of nom­i­na­tion day, March 14."The cut off for new mem­ber­ship, peo­ple join­ing the PNM who would be el­i­gi­ble to vote, would be Feb­ru­ary 28."We hope to have a pre­lim­i­nary list of mem­bers by April 14 and fi­nal list of elec­tors will be pub­lished on April 30, that is the time­line that we have," he said.A spe­cial gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing will be held on Wednes­day to dis­cuss rules and reg­u­la­tions of the in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Khan said Row­ley was plan­ning to con­tin­ue his con­stituen­cy tours this week in Ari­ma and Diego Mar­tin. He will con­tin­ue next month in San Fer­nan­do and Fyz­abad.The par­ty, Khan said, planned to open two new re­gion­al of­fices in Cou­va and Ari­ma, with­in the first quar­ter of this year. The par­ty would al­so be pro­mot­ing its "Vi­sion 2030" pro­pos­al, which Khan said was the PNM's plan once they get in­to Gov­ern­ment.Al-Rawi moved away from the elec­tions to high­light the Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to deal with the crime sit­u­a­tion.

"If you are deal­ing with a limp­ing, lame duck Gov­ern­ment as we have now, in sham­bles and chaos, we must be in a po­si­tion to present our pol­i­cy, our process and our peo­ple to the cit­i­zens of T&T," he said.