Gail Alexan­der

Hun­dreds of peo­ple were not on the PNM's vot­ing list for yes­ter­day's in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tions al­though they had prop­er­ly com­plet­ed all the process­es for this, Team Pen­ny's Ronald Boynes said yes­ter­day.That was the main prob­lem not­ed by Team Pen­ny ac­cord­ing to Boynes who added: "We've not­ed mas­sive prob­lems over­all."

Boynes, the team's le­gal ad­vis­er, said while the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants for the elec­tions were al­right in east­ern ar­eas and PN­Mites had come out to vote, there were many prob­lems with names not be­ing on the vot­ing list.Team Pen­ny stat­ed the ab­solute fi­nal vot­ers' list was on­ly is­sued last Sat­ur­day and many mem­bers yes­ter­day found their names weren't on it.

Boynes, who mon­i­tored vot­ing in five east­ern con­stituen­cies said, "A lot of peo­ple whose names were on the pre­lim­i­nary list, who were long­stand­ing mem­bers and had en­sured their mem­ber­ship was in good stand­ing by the re­quired Feb­ru­ary dead­line were not on the fi­nal vot­ing list.""That in­clud­ed a man who has been a mem­ber since 1989 and who went to Bal­isi­er House well ahead of the dead­line to en­sure his mem­ber­ship was in or­der."

"Over 40 per­sons were barred from vot­ing in To­co/San­gre Grand con­stituen­cy sev­er­al of whom I per­son­al­ly reg­is­tered us­ing the num­bered mem­ber­ship forms pre­scribed by the elec­tions com­mit­tee. Is it that some peo­ple who were rec­om­mend­ed by cer­tain per­sons are be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against?"Boynes added, "Al­so we had a case of a la­dy and her daugh­ter who reg­is­tered to­geth­er, ahead of the dead­line. She's not on the list but her daugh­ter is."

Boynes said the team is com­pil­ing all the da­ta on the sit­u­a­tion and we'll de­ter­mine what steps it would take: "Elec­tions must be free, fair and prop­er­ly run giv­ing con­tes­tants a rea­son­able chance to suc­ceed. But what we're see­ing here, the par­ty can take no heart from this ex­er­cise,""This is about peo­ple's choice and we must be sure peo­ple can vote for their choice. This sit­u­a­tion speaks to the ca­pac­i­ty of the cur­rent lead­er­ship team."

Team Pen­ny sup­port­er Laven­tille West MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite said polling he'd seen was very slow–about 10 to 15 per cent– due to con­tin­u­ing elec­tion is­sues, he be­lieved.Hy­po­lite said he re­ceived re­ports of peo­ple cam­paign­ing "right out­side" the in­for­ma­tion desk at the Barataria sta­tion.A re­port from San Fer­nan­do was a 14- year-old with the sur­name Thomas was on the vot­ers list and ac­tu­al­ly vot­ed, when the vot­ing age was 16 and over. Team Pen­ny has lodged a com­plaint on this.

Hy­po­lite said peo­ple have com­plained bal­lot num­bers are dou­bled and con­sec­u­tive num­bers mixed up.Hy­po­lite added, "We (PNM) weren't ready for this elec­tion If they had post­poned it for a month max­i­mum to sort out is­sues, we'd have got­ten a high­er turnout."

"What­ev­er re­sult, Team Pen­ny can still cel­e­brate. We will, if we win. But if we don't, we can still cel­e­brate as we'd have suc­ceed­ed in go­ing through this one-man-one-vote ex­er­cise for the first time and iden­ti­fied is­sues so the next time it's done we'll know the chal­lenges and can cor­rect them very ear­ly–and we have four years to do so be­fore an­oth­er par­ty elec­tion."

Team Row­ley ac­cused of can­vass­ing

Can­vass­ing for Team Row­ley was al­leged­ly be­ing done at sev­er­al polling sta­tions in­clud­ing La Hor­quet­ta polling sta­tion, Team Pen­ny's east unit claimed yes­ter­day.The unit made the com­plaint, say­ing a print­ed card with the names of Team Row­ley can­di­dates and a pre-print­ed "X" in the vote box­es was re­port­ed­ly be­ing giv­en to vot­ers en­ter­ing the La Hor­quet­ta Polling Sta­tion.The unit said this amount­ed to can­vass­ing, a prac­tice strict­ly pro­hib­it­ed in the rules set by the Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of the PNM.

How­ev­er, PNM in­cum­bent chair­man Franklin Khan–de­fend­ing the post on the Row­ley slate–said one could give out cards and talk to peo­ple with­in the precincts of a polling sta­tion, but could not do so in­side the sta­tion.Khan said he had no re­ports of prob­lems. He said at the Moru­ga sta­tion where he was lo­cat­ed, the turnout was "high–just like a gen­er­al elec­tion,"

Some peo­ple went to Bal­isi­er House to fol­low up on queries about their names and the vot­ing list. Diego Mar­tin res­i­dent Mark Mar­cano said he went to Bal­isi­er House head­of­fice yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to as­cer­tain why his name was not on the fi­nal list af­ter it had been on the pre­lim­i­nary list.Mar­cano said his mem­ber­ship was in or­der and he had gone to speak to the elec­tions com­mis­sion on the sit­u­a­tion.

Elec­tions vice chair­man: Too much com­plaints against Team Pen­ny

PNM elec­tions com­mis­sion vice chair­man Murchi­son Browne said while he had re­ceived sev­er­al com­plaints about the vot­ing process from Team Pen­ny of­fi­cials, there had al­so been ac­cu­sa­tions against that team about their op­er­a­tions.Browne spoke to T&T Guardian at 4 pm in be­tween tour­ing con­stituen­cies to mon­i­tor ac­tiv­i­ties in PNM's in­ter­nal poll.He said the morn­ing pe­ri­od in­di­cat­ed about 300 plus peo­ple vot­ing with a slow­er process in the af­ter­noon.

He said, "Even if we get a 20 per cent turnout, that's good for the first time–it's bet­ter than some oth­ers who use the one-man-one-vote process."He said he'd heard about many Team Pen­ny com­plaints, es­pe­cial­ly in Ari­ma.Browne added he had re­ceived "about a thou­sand phone calls" from (MP Nile­ung ) Hy­po­lite on var­i­ous is­sues.Browne said all is­sues had to be tak­en to the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the rel­e­vant sta­tion. He was at that time await­ing for­mal com­plaints

Browne said To­ba­go feed­back was that vot­ing was smoother with a good at­ten­dance at Scar­bor­ough schools polling sta­tions.He said there was no neg­a­tive feed­back from south and cen­tral ac­tiv­i­ty.At noon, in­cum­bent gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford said apart from the "usu­al" prob­lems of some peo­ple's names not be­ing on the list, every­thing was go­ing smooth­ly .

At Port-of-Spain City Hall, the polling sta­tion for Port-of-Spain con­stituen­cies, the of­fi­cer in charge said there had been a steady flow since 8 am. Around 11.15 am the line was very short. Those on hand in­clud­ed sev­er­al mem­bers of a street san­i­ta­tion crew who were work­ing near­by.At the Diego Mar­tin polling sta­tion on Wendy Fitzwilliam Boule­vard, about 200 peo­ple had vot­ed up to 11 am.