The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM's) pre­lim­i­nary vot­ers list for its May 18 in­ter­nal elec­tion is now out in con­stituen­cies and mem­bers have un­til next week Thurs­day to make ad­just­ments, ad­di­tions or fix is­sues be­fore the fi­nal list is done on April 30, PNM elec­tions com­mis­sion vice-chair­man Murchi­son Browne has con­firmed.That leaves a door open for al­most 7,000 per­sons who have been re­ject­ed from the pre­lim­i­nary list to reg­u­larise their sta­tus be­fore the fi­nal list is done on April 30, he al­so con­firmed when asked about that sit­u­a­tion.

Browne was con­tact­ed yes­ter­day fol­low­ing com­plaints by PNM's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, who is de­fend­ing his post against oth­ers in the elec­tion, and con­fir­ma­tion that PNM re­ject­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 ap­pli­cants, af­ter sev­er­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties were not­ed.Ford has de­tailed ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, say­ing peo­ple were us­ing pho­to­copied forms and in­com­plete on-line reg­is­tra­tion.He al­so re­port­ed­ly said on the ba­sis of his de­tailed re­port pre­sent­ed to PNM's Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Mon­day, the coun­cil vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to ac­cept the pre­lim­i­nary list, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 new ap­pli­cants and over 2,000 re-reg­is­tra­tions.

The pre­lim­i­nary list so far for the new one-man-one-vote sys­tem to be used in the elec­tion, com­pris­es 79,363 peo­ple, Browne con­firmed yes­ter­day.This is thou­sands more than the 800 used un­der the pre­vi­ous del­e­gate sys­tem.But af­ter Ford's con­fir­ma­tion about re­jec­tion of 7,000 ap­pli­cants from the pre­lim­i­nary list, Dr Bose Shar­ma–from the camp of lead­er­ship chal­lenger Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son–said that group was ap­peal­ing to PNM's Elec­tion Com­mis­sion to en­sure per­sons have a chance to ad­dress mi­nor reg­is­tra­tion prob­lems. Shar­ma said their camp had over 8,000 on-line reg­is­tra­tions and about 7,000 were re­ject­ed.

He said if there were ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that would have stemmed from the "se­lec­tive way" reg­is­tra­tion forms were giv­en out in the first stage of the process in which many Beck­les-Robin­son's sup­port­ers could not get forms.Shar­ma added: "Peo­ple there­fore went on-line to get forms which is a valid op­tion and any which were not filled out prop­er­ly would, of course, bounce back. When reg­is­tra­tion was ac­cept­ed, peo­ple got their re­ceipt."But a ma­jor­i­ty of on-line ap­pli­cants es­pe­cial­ly, who are new young voic­es, are be­ing re­ject­ed...it seems the oth­er camp is bent on keep­ing them out of the process."

He ques­tioned if so many is­sues were aris­ing in the in­ter­nal poll bring­ing PNM in­to dis­re­pute, "what will hap­pen if Dr Row­ley gets in­to pow­er in T&T?"Elec­tions com­mis­sion's Browne said his team had no for­mal com­plaint about the sit­u­a­tion in­clud­ing about 7,000 re­ject­ed vot­ers but if any com­plaint was of­fi­cial­ly re­ceived, it would be dealt with.He said the pre­lim­i­nary list of 79,363 vot­ers was now be­fore all con­stituen­cies and con­stituents had up to April 24 to en­sure their sta­tus was prop­er­ly in or­der be­fore the fi­nal list is done on April 30.Browne said those per­sons con­sid­ered to have ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in their reg­is­tra­tion "will know what they have to do" to en­sure their sit­u­a­tions were reg­u­larised and they were el­i­gi­ble to vote.