Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) mem­bers came out in full sup­port of in­cum­bent chair­man Jack Warn­er and re­sound­ing­ly vot­ed in his favour. The mem­bers have spo­ken, even though the vot­er turnout was low. Warn­er, who is back to serve as the par­ty's chair­man for an­oth­er term, whipped his lone ri­val at­tor­ney Ash­vani Ma­habir, claim­ing a land­slide vic­to­ry. Ma­habir was op­ti­mistic of un­seat­ing Warn­er and even ques­tioned his lead­er­ship style up to Fri­day. Al­so mak­ing a clean sweep in yes­ter­day's in­ter­nal elec­tions was the Na­tion­al­ists slate led by Dr Roodal Mooni­lal. San Fer­nan­do May­or Mar­lene Coudray who vied for the po­si­tion as one of three po­lit­i­cal lead­ers on the Na­tion­al­ists slate al­so emerged vic­to­ri­ous. Six­ty-three can­di­dates vied for 16 po­si­tions on the par­ty's na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive.

Mooni­lal last night con­firmed with Sun­day Guardian that his slate of 16 was in a com­fort­able po­si­tion. He al­so con­firmed that Warn­er had won his po­si­tion "com­fort­ably." "We have won in Pointe-a-Pierre. We are lead­ing in San Fer­nan­do, Siparia, Ma­yaro, Cou­va North/South, Oropouche East/West and in Fyz­abad. We are very op­ti­mistic be­cause at this point, it is look­ing like a clean sweep," Mooni­lal said short­ly be­fore 9 pm. Trail­ing be­hind were Gen­er­a­tion Next sup­port­ed by founder of the UNC Bas­deo Pan­day and UNC Sol­diers led by UNC ac­tivist Sunil Ramjits­ingh. Mean­while, thou­sands of vot­ers stayed away from the polls, record­ing an all-time low turnout. Out of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 81,000 reg­is­tered vot­ers list­ed to vote in the elec­tions on­ly 15,000 came out to vote, re­ports in­di­cat­ed around 7 pm yes­ter­day.

Chair­man of the elec­tions com­mit­tee Kem­c­hand Ram­dath con­firmed with Sun­day Guardian that around 20 per cent of the reg­is­tered vot­ers ex­er­cised their fran­chise. The pre­lim­i­nary vot­ing list was pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 28 at var­i­ous dis­trict of­fices al­low­ing vot­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see if they were el­i­gi­ble to vote. How­ev­er, there were ram­pant re­ports of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties at var­i­ous polling sta­tions yes­ter­day. In sev­er­al in­stances, Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands some vot­ers claim­ing to be life­time mem­bers of the UNC were turned away af­ter their names were not on the vot­ing list. At the Wa­ter­loo High School, many found that their names and that of their rel­a­tives were not on the list. Sim­i­lar com­plaints were reg­is­tered at the Aranguez Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School. -re­port­ing by ANI­KA GUMBS-SAN­DI­FORD, SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI and SHAS­TRI BOODAN