Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader and head of the One PNM slate, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, says her team’s sweep­ing vic­to­ry in the in­ter­nal elec­tion on Sun­day sig­nals a re­newed man­date for uni­ty and re­form.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les, who has be­come the PNM’s first fe­male po­lit­i­cal leader, said pre­lim­i­nary re­ports had in­di­cat­ed a land­slide win across the board for mem­bers of the One PNM slate.

“My en­tire slate won, so I want to con­grat­u­late the mem­ber­ship that came out to vote. Now we have to work on unit­ing and re­build­ing the par­ty, and I am quite hap­py,” she said.

At the time of the in­ter­view, the fi­nal re­sults were not of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed. How­ev­er, Beck­les ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the out­come in light of con­cerns raised about vot­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties.

“I have been in elec­tions, I have con­test­ed many elec­tions in the PNM and from time to time, you would hear the is­sue of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties. You would have heard me talk about the im­por­tance of mod­ernising the par­ty, look­ing at how we ad­dress those is­sues. I was pret­ty open about it, that we have some work to do, and I am look­ing for­ward to ad­dress­ing it. We have to ac­cept that there are short­com­ings and we have to deal with it.”

The pre­lim­i­nary re­sults re­leased by the Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee (ESC) sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed a sweep­ing win for Beck­les’ team. In­de­pen­dent Max­ine Richards se­cured wel­fare of­fi­cer post.

The in­ter­nal elec­tion came at a piv­otal mo­ment for the PNM, as the par­ty seeks to re­gain mo­men­tum and heal in­ter­nal frac­tures that have emerged fol­low­ing its de­feat to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress at the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Beck­les has em­pha­sised that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and re-en­gage­ment with the par­ty’s grass­roots base will be among the top pri­or­i­ties go­ing for­ward.

Mean­while, PNM PRO-elect, Faris Al-Rawi said he does not ex­pect claims of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in Sun­day’s in­ter­nal elec­tion to af­fect the par­ty’s thrust to­wards uni­fy­ing and mov­ing for­ward.

How­ev­er, head of the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons slate, Farai Ma­sai­sai, con­firmed that an of­fi­cial let­ter was sent to the chair­man of the ESC doc­u­ment­ing the con­cerns, which in­clud­ed: un­equal ac­cess to mem­ber­ship lists and con­tact in­for­ma­tion, ap­proval and con­sul­ta­tion of elec­tion rules, el­i­gi­bil­i­ty of un­list­ed per­sons, de­tailed elec­tion pro­ce­dure and se­cu­ri­ty of bal­lot box­es.

Al-Rawi, who al­so agreed on the need to ad­dress mech­a­nisms go­ing for­ward, said the con­cerns will not erode the par­ty’s thrust to re­build.

“You must ac­cept sharp com­pe­ti­tion. We are not as sharp as the UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tions and here they are in gov­ern­ment. What we had (was) a slate of peo­ple who re­fused to give their names. It is the first time we saw an anony­mous group mak­ing barbs and un­til they present them­selves, you can­not en­ter­tain any dis­cus­sion.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing re­ports of vot­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties was Fos­ter Cum­mings, who re­tained his post as gen­er­al sec­re­tary.

“We are not at a state of per­fec­tion. I think the com­mit­tee did a pret­ty good job, and there­fore the re­sults, the votes for the peo­ple who won, were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than those who were not suc­cess­ful. At the end of the day, we move to­wards re­build­ing and go­ing for­ward with the par­ty.”

The re­sults will be rat­i­fied at the par­ty’s spe­cial con­ven­tion on Sun­day.