Richard Lord

The PNM is not ready for the one-man-one-vote sys­tem of vot­ing. That was the view of Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who chal­lenged Dr Kei­th Row­ley for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader dur­ing yes­ter­day's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions.She al­so sought to con­cede as she in­di­cat­ed that while she re­mained con­fi­dent "if it is God's will and I don't win, I think I have done my best. I had an ex­cel­lent team and I am sat­is­fied that we have done our best."

Thank­ing her sup­port­ers, Beck­les-Robin­son said, "We just have to recog­nise that we have to do bet­ter the next time and of course the next time should be me lead­ing the PNM."Beck­les ar­rived short­ly af­ter 11 am to cast her bal­lot at the Ari­ma Cen­tral Sec­ondary School. She was ac­com­pa­nied by her hus­band, Noel Robin­son. He is a par­ty group vice chair­man but his name was not on the list of elec­tors.

The vot­ing process was slow as Beck­les-Robin­son said she took some 45 min­utes to com­plete the ex­er­cise. There were some 15 po­si­tions to be filled on the ex­ec­u­tive.She com­plained about the frus­tra­tion and dis­tress of mem­bers who lived in dis­tant com­mu­ni­ties such as La Fil­lette, Blan­chisseuse and Va­len­cia who would have want­ed to vote but were un­able to do so. She said it was ridicu­lous and out­ra­geous that there was on­ly one pol­ing sta­tion for the large Ari­ma con­stituen­cy.

She said while it might not have been de­lib­er­ate, the par­ty must take blame for the late avail­abil­i­ty and in­ac­cu­ra­cies of the vot­ers list."As far as I am con­cerned the par­ty sim­ply was not ready for a one-man-one-vote." she in­sist­ed.That is not good for the par­ty. I think it is a whole ques­tion of reper­cus­sions for the par­ty lat­er on be­cause this is a process the whole coun­try is look­ing at," she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les-Robin­son, the PNM's base sup­port was not suf­fi­cient to win the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. She said deny­ing your own mem­bers the right to vote will ad­verse­ly af­fect the par­ty in the fu­ture. "They are the same peo­ple you have to go back and beg to vote for you be­cause your base is clear­ly not enough for you to win," Beck­les-Robin­son added.She al­so said the PNM must seek to woo mem­bers of the COP and oth­er par­ties for the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

She said she had no in­ten­tion of leav­ing the PNM and con­tin­ues to as­pire to lead the par­ty. Her team called Team Pen­ny was the ma­jor chal­lenger to the in­cum­bent team led by Row­ley. It was the first elec­tions con­duct­ed un­der the sys­tem of one-man-one-vote in the par­ty's 58 year his­to­ry.