The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons team, con­test­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tions of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), has threat­ened le­gal ac­tion against the par­ty’s Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee over de­lays in re­leas­ing the vot­ers list and polling sta­tion in­for­ma­tion.

In a let­ter dat­ed June 7, at­tor­ney St Clair Michael O’Neil wrote on be­half of the team:

“Fail­ure to do so would re­sult in our team con­sid­er­ing all le­gal op­tions avail­able to us with­out fur­ther no­tice to the Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee.”

The let­ter fol­lowed a re­sponse from the Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee dat­ed June 6, in which Sec­re­tary Dr An­nalese Per­cy wrote:

“Please be ad­vised that polling sta­tions for all con­stituen­cies have not yet been fi­nalised. All in­ter­est­ed par­ties, in­clud­ing your clients, will be pro­vid­ed with the fi­nalised mem­ber­ship list­ings next week.”

O’Neil replied: “The Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons Team ex­press­es its sin­cere dis­ap­point­ment re­gard­ing the un­ac­cept­able de­lay in re­ceiv­ing the vot­ers list and es­sen­tial in­for­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the lo­ca­tion of polling sta­tions. This sig­nif­i­cant de­lay se­vere­ly im­pacts our abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly can­vass and en­gage with the elec­torate.”

He added, “With the elec­tion a mere 16 days away, every mo­ment is crit­i­cal for our cam­paign to reach and com­mu­ni­cate with the vot­ers. The be­lat­ed pro­vi­sion of this cru­cial da­ta places the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons Team at a pro­found and un­fair dis­ad­van­tage.”

O’Neil al­so raised con­cerns about un­equal ac­cess to vot­er da­ta. “It is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing that oth­er in­di­vid­u­als, who seem­ing­ly have di­rect con­trol or ear­li­er ac­cess to this sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion, ap­pear to be able to com­mence their can­vass­ing ef­forts well in ad­vance of oth­ers. This cre­ates an un­even play­ing field that com­pro­mis­es the prin­ci­ples of fair­ness and trans­paren­cy es­sen­tial to a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion.”

He de­mand­ed that the com­plete vot­ers list and polling sta­tion in­for­ma­tion be re­leased “with­out any fur­ther de­lay but no lat­er than the 9th day of June 2025.”

In an ear­li­er let­ter dat­ed June 5, O’Neil had al­so ques­tioned the se­cu­ri­ty of bal­lots be­tween the vot­ing date and the PNM con­ven­tion.

“Up­on the com­ple­tion of vot­ing on the 22nd day of June 2025, what mea­sures are be­ing put in place to en­sure that there is no tam­per­ing with bal­lots or bal­lot box­es giv­en that there is a 7-day gap un­til the con­ven­tion? We fur­ther ask what day is the elec­tion re­sults card­ed to be dis­closed to the pub­lic and in par­tic­u­lar the PNM mem­ber­ship.”

The PNM’s in­ter­nal elec­tions are sched­uled for June 22 with the con­ven­tion to be held a week lat­er.