The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is de­nounc­ing claims of vot­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in its re­cent in­ter­nal poll.

Amid re­newed calls for heal­ing with­in the PNM, de­feat­ed can­di­dates are be­ing en­cour­aged to put aside their dis­ap­point­ments to help re­build the par­ty.

In re­sponse to claims of vot­ing ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties made by for­mer min­is­ter Roger Boynes who con­test­ed the po­si­tion of Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, Diego Mar­tin North/East MP Colm Im­bert said the com­plaints were “ab­solute­ly un­true” as the elec­tion was free and fair.

“He wrote a let­ter a cou­ple of days ago com­plain­ing about the man­ner in which the elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee had to han­dle the man­age­ment of the elec­tion and in that let­ter, he made a most as­ton­ish­ing state­ment which I know to be in­ac­cu­rate,” Im­bert said.

“He said that ac­cord­ing to the in­for­ma­tion com­ing to him, but it’s in writ­ing, the mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent slate were ahead in 30 con­stituen­cies out of 41. That’s en­tire­ly in­cor­rect. That is not so. 

“We were look­ing at the re­sults on the night it­self and there were maybe five con­stituen­cies, if so many, where some mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent slate were ahead. But to say that 30 of 40 con­stituen­cies had the in­de­pen­dent slate ahead, it’s just fan­ta­sy.”

Asked what the par­ty plans to do if Boynes fol­lows up on threats to take ac­tion, Im­bert said, “These are ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple. They’re ex­pe­ri­enced lawyers. They know that they wouldn’t stand a chance con­test­ing this legal­ly ... I don’t think this could pos­si­bly go any­where, and if it does, it will have no re­sult.

“I didn’t even see a veiled threat of le­gal ac­tion. What I saw was a com­plaint and what hap­pens in these sit­u­a­tions, since it mir­rors what takes place in oth­er elec­tions, is that you have to look at the will of the vot­ers.

“Let’s say, for ex­am­ple, one or two votes are mis­count­ed, the mar­gin of vic­to­ry for every­body on the leader of the Op­po­si­tion’s slate was well over 1,000, so there’s no way any of the mi­nor is­sues that may have arisen - I’m not say­ing any did—could have in any way af­fect­ed the out­come of the elec­tion, and they know that.”

Boynes re­ceived 2620 votes while Cum­mings re­ceived 4122.

Ef­forts to con­tact Boynes yes­ter­day were fu­tile.

Im­bert said Farai Ma­sai­sai, who con­test­ed the po­si­tion of chair­man, was al­so not pleased with the in­ter­nal elec­tion re­sults.

Ma­sai­sai re­ceived 422 votes while chair­man-elect Mar­vin Gon­za­les re­ceived 4392 votes.

“He had quite a catchy cam­paign song. He had a video, he had a big pre­sen­ta­tion, and there­fore he put a lot of ef­fort in­to it and he got very few votes. I mean, very, very, very few. I think in all, maybe 500 to­tal across the board for all his can­di­dates and so on so he must be very dis­ap­point­ed, but I don’t think he has a leg to stand on,” Im­bert said.

He main­tained that de­spite the re­sults, the un­suc­cess­ful can­di­dates were still valu­able to the par­ty.

“I would not want them to think that their ef­fort was not ap­pre­ci­at­ed. These are all very im­por­tant, very valu­able mem­bers of the par­ty and I ex­pect that as soon as they get over their dis­ap­point­ment, they will join with every­body else to re­build the PNM and make it the strong, pow­er­ful force that it should be and will be.”

The new ex­ec­u­tive will be sworn in at the par­ty’s con­ven­tion on Sun­day.

Re­peat­ing her calls for heal­ing, po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said, “Now that the in­ter­nal elec­tions are over, I am cer­tain­ly mak­ing a call to every­one to for us to fo­cus as a par­ty on the re­build­ing. There are a lot of lessons that we have learned fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tions on April 28.”

She added, “The im­por­tant thing is to do some re­build­ing, do some heal­ing.”