Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Some Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers are call­ing on po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to ex­er­cise mag­nan­i­mous lead­er­ship and ask Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai to re­main a mem­ber of the gen­er­al coun­cil.

Ma­sai­sai, whose Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons slate was de­feat­ed in the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions last Sun­day, re­signed from the coun­cil yes­ter­day.

He and the five mem­bers of his slate who were de­feat­ed for posts they con­test­ed, ex­pressed con­cerns about al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties dur­ing the elec­tion and the elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee’s man­age­ment of the polls.

In a let­ter to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, Ma­sai­sai wrote: “The lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty by the elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee to can­di­dates that were not of the One PNM team was not in keep­ing with any stan­dards of fair­ness in any de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety.”

He said he and his team will con­tin­ue to work on the ground “for the sake of the peo­ple of T&T. I wish all those that have won their re­spec­tive po­si­tions the very best.”

PNM in­sid­ers, who not­ed Ma­sai­sai’s con­tri­bu­tion in the gen­er­al coun­cil and the call for heal­ing and re­build­ing by Beck­les, felt she should “demon­strate ma­ture, ma­ter­nal men­tor­ing lead­er­ship” and ask Ma­sai­sai to stay on. They al­so felt the heal­ing process should in­volve hav­ing all de­feat­ed can­di­dates work on spe­cif­ic ar­eas in a plan that should be out­lined to the par­ty as soon as pos­si­ble.

Beck­les didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly state whether she would ask Ma­sai­sai to re­main on the gen­er­al coun­cil, but at a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, she said she in­tends reach­ing out to de­feat­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tion and in­ter­nal poll can­di­dates and would make an ex­tra ef­fort to recog­nise those who had of­fered them­selves.

Beck­les said there’s room for every­one in the PNM and she’s look­ing for­ward to all con­tin­u­ing to work in the par­ty’s in­ter­est.

Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert said Ma­sai­sai had a “very in­ter­est­ing cam­paign” and not­ed the strong ef­forts by Chin­ua Al­leyne, Roger Boynes, Paula Gopee-Scoon and Don­na Cox. He said he wouldn’t want de­feat­ed can­di­dates to feel their ef­fort wasn’t ap­pre­ci­at­ed. He ex­pect­ed that as soon as they “got over their dis­ap­point­ment,” they would join ef­forts to re­build PNM.

Boynes agreed all hands are need­ed on deck but dis­agreed with Cum­mings about the rea­son for last Sun­day’s low vot­er turnout.

“While a po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship con­test would have added ad­di­tion­al in­ter­est, I be­lieve the many le­git­i­mate mem­bers whose names were struck off the elec­toral list and the many more who were turned away from vot­ing for the same rea­son and the lack of suf­fi­cient bal­lot pa­pers at sev­er­al polling sta­tions and the gen­er­al­ly dis­or­gan­ised arrange­ments— whether de­lib­er­ate or not—con­tributed to the low­er than ex­pect­ed turnout,” Boynes said.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning was among sev­er­al PN­Mites who said if the del­e­gate sys­tem of vot­ing had been used last Sun­day, it would have been bet­ter.

Be­fore the in­ter­nal polls, Man­ning had called for the del­e­gate sys­tem to be re­vis­it­ed, as it had “proven it­self su­pe­ri­or in terms of sup­port­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples in many ma­ture democ­ra­cies world­wide.”

He added: “It al­so sup­ports the en­trenched par­ty group sys­tem which has kept the par­ty strong for all these years.”