Am­bi­ka Ja­gas­sars­ingh

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PMM) po­lit­i­cal leader hope­ful Karen Nunez-Tesheira suc­cess­ful­ly filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on Mon­day.

But while she said the process went smooth­ly, she was con­cerned about the up­com­ing elec­tion process.

The for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter ar­rived at the PNM’s com­pound in Ch­agua­nas with lit­tle fan­fare, ac­com­pa­nied by Dr Ken­neth Butch­er, the chair­man hope­ful, as well as Rev­erend Bish­op Vic­tor Phillip, who is vy­ing for the po­si­tion of elec­tions of­fi­cer.

Nunez-Tesheira said, “Things went very, very well but de­spite this, the process be­ing adopt­ed leaves one with a sense of un­ease.”

Nunez-Tesheira has of­fi­cial­ly raised the three-day vot­ing process in the up­com­ing months of No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber with the elec­tion com­mit­tee.

She said, “When we deal with the Jan­u­ary elec­tions it’s done in one day and the se­cu­ri­ty is very, very tight. In ad­di­tion to that, the EBC is an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion. I’m not cast­ing as­per­sions on any­body but what I am say­ing is this, that when the per­son re­spon­si­ble for se­cur­ing those box­es for that large pe­ri­od of time, there are ones who would have an in­ter­est in you know, the out­come for cer­tain per­sons, it gives you a sense of dis­com­fort and makes you feel un­easy and I don’t think it is keep­ing with trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

She called the lengthy time be­tween the vot­ing “rather un­usu­al,” adding, “What I did was do what I could, which is to make it a pub­lic is­sue and I don’t say it is re­al­ly three days of vot­ing be­cause if the fi­nal vote count oc­curs on the 4th of De­cem­ber, then the vot­ing is re­al­ly from the 26th to the 4th of De­cem­ber.”

Nunez-Tesheira said an­oth­er wor­ri­some as­pect was that there was no trans­paren­cy and no clear an­swer re­gard­ing the reg­is­tra­tion process for vot­ing, now that the nom­i­na­tion pe­ri­od has start­ed.

“The par­ty, it is not a golf club, it is not a ten­nis club...the in­ten­tion is to form the gov­ern­ment and you start with the foun­da­tion and so it both­ered me that the use of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, the so­cial me­dia and all these things avail­able to us, that it was not made very clear to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the dates that you had to be reg­is­tered by and the fact is, it’s too late to do that.”

Nunez-Tesheira added that if elect­ed as the leader, she will not just “talk the talk” but “walk the walk” and pro­vide trans­paren­cy. She said cur­rent­ly, there was “a sense of dis­con­nect, a sense of in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty on the part of mem­bers of par­lia­ment.

The PNM’s cur­rent leader, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, did not show up at the par­ty’s of­fice to file his nom­i­na­tions due to pri­or par­lia­men­tary com­mit­ments.

In­stead, he was rep­re­sent­ed by Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion CEO and chair­man Sigler Jack and chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin West Con­stituen­cy Robert Cezair, who filed on his be­half.