Gail Alexan­der

The rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment suf­fered an over­all 8 per cent fall in sup­port in Mon­day's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion com­pared with its po­si­tion in the 2013 elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

Row­ley gave the fig­ure dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing as he slammed the me­dia for "mis­in­for­ma­tion" in its cov­er­age of Mon­day's elec­tion.

The PNM won sev­en cor­po­ra­tions to the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' six, with a tie for the San­gre Grande cor­po­ra­tion.

Row­e­ly said mis­in­for­ma­tion was fed to the me­dia to dis­tract from what was clear­ly a de­feat of the Op­po­si­tion.

"The en­tire cov­er­age on Mon­day was based on mis­in­for­ma­tion fed to the me­dia...peo­ple who didn't want to face a de­feat or­gan­ised to do this - I must say they did a bril­liant job of feed­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion," he said.

Tak­ing is­sue with re­ports of pre­lim­i­nary, es­ti­mat­ed (un­con­firmed ) vot­er turnout of 17 per cent, Row­ley said da­ta avail­able to the PNM was that the vot­er turnout was 34 per cent. He said their in­for­ma­tion was al­so that the turnout fig­ure was as high as 40 per cent.

Most ar­eas were around 30 per cent, with the low­est turnout of 22 per cent and 23 per cent in Port-of -Spain and Diego Mar­tin "where PNM won all seats," he said.

"That be­ing the case, it was a lit­tle ag­gra­vat­ing to see the en­tire me­dia corps ac­cept­ing wrong in­for­ma­tion," he said, not­ing the PNM was await­ing fi­nal re­sults by the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion, which are due to be re­leased to­day.

The 34 per cent turnout fig­ure PNM has da­ta on, Row­ley said, was "rel­a­tive­ly nor­mal" for a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

"But it was put across on Mon­day, that this (elec­tion) was the low­est ever turnout – that's plain not true; it's an av­er­age turnout," he said.

"In 2013 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion the (turnout of 41 per cent) was un­usu­al as we had a very un­pop­u­lar gov­ern­ment, and we had an ex­er­cised PNM an­tic­i­pat­ing gen­er­al elec­tion - so we had a good turnout then."

"There were times be­fore when the LG turnout was in the 20s. ...I'm not try­ing to tell you how to do your scruti­ny and analy­sis. All I'm say­ing is let it be done on the ba­sis of the da­ta."

He added, "What hap­pened Mon­day was an em­bar­rass­ment. I saw peo­ple on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion, not a scrap of pa­per in front of them, not a line of da­ta – yet pon­tif­i­cat­ing on da­ta which was plain­ly wrong and at­tempt­ing to hold the PNM to analy­sis on wrong da­ta."

Row­ley said it wasn't for him to tell the me­dia how to run their busi­ness, "but if you're go­ing to com­ment about us, it's not un­rea­son­able for you to put to us cor­rect in­for­ma­tion."

Row­ley said the PNM went in­to the elec­tion with 85 seats and won 82.

"But those who won 55 seats man­aged to get the me­dia to say they won – I find that con­ver­sa­tion a lit­tle con­vo­lut­ed...It's not true the Op­po­si­tion took 12 PNM seats."

He added the PNM lost one seat and won new seats, in­clud­ing in south, which hadn't been won in 24 years.

...APOL­O­GIS­ES TO RE­PORTER

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day in­di­cat­ed he had apol­o­gised to News­day re­porter Sean Dou­glas.

This fol­low­ing re­ports that Row­ley had "ste­upsed" on Mon­day night when asked a ques­tion by Dou­glas at a press con­fer­ence at PNM's Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters af­ter Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion re­sults.

Row­ley al­lud­ed to the apol­o­gy while re­spond­ing to ques­tions at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

He said, "I apol­o­gised to my friend Sean Dou­glas...who was be­ing a lit­tle (am)... any­way..."

The PM had come in for crit­i­cism of his be­hav­iour on Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day, when asked if he re­gret­ted the "ste­ups," Row­ley said he'd been "amazed" on Mon­day at what "be­came an ex­er­cise for the me­dia" and he wasn't sure the me­dia had known what he was re­fer­ring to.

He said his re­ac­tion had been to "mis­in­for­ma­tion" be­ing ped­dled and it was ag­gra­vat­ing to him.