Gail Alexan­der

The To Pre­serve the Bal­isi­er (TPTB) group is look­ing to le­gal ac­tion over the un­avail­abil­i­ty of reg­is­tra­tion forms for mem­bers to vote in the PNM's in­ter­nal elec­tion, says its spokesman Dr Bose Shar­ma.He said up to yes­ter­day its mem­bers, who are back­ing Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son to chal­lenge in­cum­bent leader Kei­th Row­ley, were un­able to get forms to reg­is­ter to vote. He said mem­bers need­ed about 1,000 forms but were be­ing told there were none."It's be­gin­ning to look sin­is­ter now since oth­er per­sons have been able to get forms though they are not from our side. We are look­ing at all mis­de­meanours and breach of rules," he added.

Shar­ma said the group al­so had con­cerns about the in­de­pen­dence of the PNM's elec­tion com­mis­sion which was be­ing es­tab­lished to mon­i­tor the poll. He said some mem­bers would be drawn from the PNM's gen­er­al coun­cil.He ac­cused some lead­er­ship mem­bers of dic­ta­tor­ship and try­ing to in­tim­i­date vot­ers. He point­ed to al­leged state­ments this week from the in­cum­bent team that those who vot­ed against them would be "jeop­ar­dis­ing their po­lit­i­cal ca­reers."

Not­ing state­ments by Row­ley's team, he al­so ac­cused the in­cum­bents of flip-flop­ping on the Calder Hart is­sue and now call­ing it a mere "ad­min­is­tra­tive prob­lem" af­ter Row­ley had made out that it was a ma­jor cor­rup­tion mat­ter in 2010, help­ing to cause the demise of PNM's Man­ning gov­ern­ment then.The TPTB's next meet­ing sup­port­ing Beck­les-Robin­son is in San­gre Grande next week, he said.