Richard Lord

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Prof Sel­wyn Ryan says there should be a stan­dard sys­tem for the su­per­vi­sion of in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tions and the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) should have a lim­it­ed su­per­vi­so­ry role.Ryan spoke with re­porters briefly dur­ing his vis­it to St An­tho­ny's Col­lege, which was the Diego Mar­tin West polling sta­tion for the PNM's one-man-one-vote na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions.

It was the first time in the par­ty's 58-year-his­to­ry that its ex­ec­u­tive was be­ing elect­ed un­der a sys­tem of one man one vote. The par­ty used the del­e­gate sys­tem pre­vi­ous­ly.Ryan said yes­ter­day's elec­tion "cer­tain­ly has my in­ter­est. I thought I should come and see what is hap­pen­ing, es­pe­cial­ly since oth­er par­ties are plan­ning elec­tions." The Con­gress of the Peo­ple and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress–two par­ties in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment–are among oth­er par­ties ex­pect­ed to have in­ter­nal elec­tions this year.

And in the wake of that, Ryan said there was need for a stan­dard elec­tion process. "My feel­ing is that there should be a stan­dard­ised process part­ly su­per­vised by the EBC."Ryan said his in­ter­est in the poll was re­lat­ed to two is­sues: the one-man-one-vote sys­tem and the con­test be­tween Row­ley and Beck­les-Robin­son.Ryan de­clined to pre­dict the win­ner of the elec­tion, which was be­ing con­test­ed by slates led by Row­ley and Beck­les-Robin­son. There were sev­er­al com­plaints of elec­tion ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties by the re­spec­tive slates yes­ter­day.