Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Laven­tille West con­stituen­cy unit has or­dered that a “prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed” meet­ing of the unit’s Women’s League be held due to cer­tain “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” at the League’s meet­ing on Mon­day, where at­ten­dees large­ly vot­ed for at­tor­ney Ka­reem Mar­celle to be the can­di­date—and in­cum­bent Laven­tille West MP Fitzger­ald Hinds re­ceived on­ly one vote.

The sit­u­a­tion was con­firmed fol­low­ing a state­ment from the Laven­tille West chair­man yes­ter­day. State­ments from oth­er se­nior PNM Women’s League of­fi­cials have al­so tak­en is­sue with the Laven­tille West Women’s League meet­ing on Mon­day.

The PNM is­sued a call for nom­i­na­tions from 15 con­stituen­cies held by PNM MPs on Oc­to­ber 21. Screen­ing is ex­pect­ed to be­gin by the end of month.

Laven­tille West set a No­vem­ber 8 dead­line for nom­i­na­tions to be re­ceived.

MP Hinds didn’t re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s query on if he’d seek nom­i­na­tion.

How­ev­er, Laven­tille West of­fi­cials con­firmed that Hinds had ex­pressed in­ter­est at a re­cent meet­ing.

On Mon­day, the unit no­ti­fied par­ty groups that three per­sons have sub­mit­ted con­sent forms for nom­i­na­tion: Hinds, (sup­port­ed by Par­ty Group 69), Dr Kadelle Jes­samy (sup­port­ed by PG 25) and Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion al­der­man/at­tor­ney Mar­celle.

Ac­tivists said a Laven­tille West Women’s League meet­ing, held on Mon­day to vote for a nom­i­nee, sup­port­ed Mar­celle with 38 votes. There was one vote for Hinds and three ab­sten­tions.

A video clip of the vot­ing on Hinds showed a woman ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing and stat­ing that the cur­rent MP Hinds had in­di­cat­ed his in­ter­est, con­sent­ing to seek nom­i­na­tion to re­turn. Call­ing for a show of hands, the woman called Hinds’ name three times to as­cer­tain all who were in favour of his nom­i­na­tion. There was no re­sponse the first two times. One per­son raised their hand the third time it was stat­ed.

Word of the out­come spread since Mon­day. The video clip was al­so leaked on so­cial me­dia.

Cer­tain Laven­tille West ac­tivists said Mar­celle was al­so ex­pect­ed to re­ceive nom­i­na­tion from the con­stituen­cy’s Youth League ahead, plus oth­er par­ty groups.

How­ev­er, the leak­ing of the video clip of the meet­ing was rep­ri­mand­ed by se­nior Women’s League of­fi­cials, who, in no­ti­fi­ca­tion to the Laven­tille West unit ex­pressed “deep dis­ap­point­ment” that a “con­fi­den­tial meet­ing was record­ed” and sub­se­quent­ly re­leased on so­cial me­dia.

It was stat­ed that this brought the con­stituen­cy unit in­to dis­re­pute and tar­nished the Women’s League’s na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion. It was al­so stat­ed that it was the first time “we have been en­trust­ed with the ho­n­our of nom­i­nat­ing a can­di­date for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion—a right which League of­fi­cials fought hard for—and it was cru­cial that mem­bers up­hold the in­tegri­ty of the nom­i­na­tion process.”

The no­ti­fi­ca­tion al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the use of a show of hands method for vot­ing, called for ap­proach­ing such mat­ters with se­ri­ous­ness and re­spect and urged work­ing to­geth­er to “en­sure we rep­re­sent our League with the dig­ni­ty it rep­re­sents.”

Yes­ter­day, a state­ment from Laven­tille West chair­man Richard Wal­cott stat­ed that no­tice had been tak­en of “what ap­pears to be a meet­ing of the Women’s League of the Laven­tille West con­stituen­cy” on Mon­day.

The state­ment added, “How­ev­er, up­on in­ves­ti­ga­tion, it was de­ter­mined that there were cer­tain ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in ad­di­tion to the fact that all units of the con­stituen­cy were not in­formed by due no­tice of the meet­ing. Fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate with the wider mem­ber­ship of the con­stituen­cy posed a se­ri­ous threat which un­der­mined the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry process and the democ­ra­cy that our par­ty is known for.”

“The chair­man and la­dy vice chair­man of the con­stituen­cy have, there­fore, ad­vised that a prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed meet­ing should be held at a de­ter­mined date, time and place, en­sur­ing that all units of the con­stituen­cy of Laven­tille West are du­ly in­formed of the same.”

Con­tact­ed af­ter­wards, Wal­cott said he had no fur­ther com­ment on the state­ment.

“It speaks for it­self,” he added.

The Laven­tille West ex­ec­u­tive was to meet last night to de­cide when the Laven­tille West Women’s League meet­ing would be held.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings didn’t re­spond to query on the is­sue. Nor did PNM Women’s League head Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

One Laven­tille West ac­tivist claimed an­oth­er meet­ing would be “il­le­gal.” Con­cerns raised by se­nior Women’s League of­fi­cials about vot­ing by show of hands, how­ev­er, was crit­i­cised in a PNM so­cial me­dia cir­cle as “hypocrisy,” cit­ing use of such method at the PNM’s re­cent Gen­er­al Coun­cil which can­celled PNM’s con­ven­tion.