Gail Alexan­der

The fi­nal vot­ing list for Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) May 18 in­ter­nal poll has risen from 79,363 to 81,529, ac­cord­ing to par­ty's elec­tions com­mis­sion vice-chair­man Murchi­son Browne.Mem­bers of Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son's team are check­ing to see if their es­ti­mat­ed 3,500 sup­port­ers have got­ten on to the list. Beck­les-Robin­son is chal­leng­ing the in­cum­bent po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for lead­er­ship of the par­ty. Both are field­ing can­di­dates for the oth­er ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions be­ing con­test­ed.Browne con­firmed the to­tal num­ber of vot­ers on the fi­nal vot­ing list af­ter the it was ap­proved by the par­ty's gen­er­al coun­cil last night. The dead­line for the fi­nal list was April 30.

The pre­lim­i­nary list of 79,363 was ap­proved by the Coun­cil on April 14 fol­low­ing which some of­fi­cials claimed there were ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. In turn, some mem­bers of Team Pen­ny claimed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 7,000 of 8,000 sup­port­ers did not get on to the list.Team Pen­ny mem­bers met with the elec­tions com­mis­sion last Thurs­day. Then, the dead­line for bona fide mem­bers, those who be­came mem­bers by Feb­ru­ary 28, to lodge queries was ex­tend­ed from last week Fri­day to April 28.Team Pen­ny's NiLe­ung Hy­po­lite said Tues­day the group had fol­lowed the in­struc­tions of com­mis­sion mem­bers and made writ­ten rep­re­sen­ta­tion for over 3,500 per­sons whose names were at­tached in the let­ter.

He said those peo­ple had ap­plied on-line be­fore the Feb­ru­ary 28 mem­ber­ship dead­line and "for one rea­son or an­oth­er may not have been on the pre­lim­i­nary list."Af­ter yes­ter­day's coun­cil meet­ing, Browne told T&T Guardian the fi­nal list was now 81,529. He could not say if Team Pen­ny's sup­port­ers made it on to the list.Browne added: "What we can say is that those per­sons who are bona-fide mem­bers of the par­ty and who fol­lowed the process would be the per­sons who got through."He could not say what tran­spired in the case of Team Pen­ny's blan­ket rep­re­sen­ta­tion for its 3,500 sup­port­ers. He said that group had been in­formed of the process.Con­tact­ed last night, Team Pen­ny's Ronald Boynes said he was un­aware of the out­come of the sit­u­a­tion and the coun­cil was meet­ing on the is­sue. He said as soon as the meet­ing end­ed, the team in­tend­ed to check what oc­curred with the ap­pli­ca­tions for its sup­port­ers. He es­ti­mat­ed they num­bered around 4,000. Boynes said he would have an idea of the po­si­tion by to­day.