Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A sup­ple­men­tary list of vot­ers for Sun­day’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in­ter­nal ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions will be re­leased to­day and added to the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship roll of 100,200 el­i­gi­ble PN­Mites.

How­ev­er, one mem­ber con­test­ing the elec­tion is query­ing whether in­cum­bent ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers are get­ting an un­fair ad­van­tage on in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by Richard Wal­cott, chair­man of the Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee.

The dead­line for queries from mem­bers re­gard­ing the list was ex­tend­ed from last Fri­day to last Sat­ur­day. Peo­ple who had lodged queries about their names not be­ing on the list were sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved for the sup­ple­men­tary list, Wal­cott con­firmed. No names were sub­tract­ed from the mem­ber­ship list.

The cur­rent mem­ber­ship list of 100,200 al­so in­cludes 1,200 peo­ple who ap­plied for mem­ber­ship up to last month’s dead­line for this.

A 15-point guide­line for tak­ing Sun­day’s count and re­gard­ing chal­lenges was is­sued to can­di­dates yes­ter­day, Wal­cott said.

Among the guide­lines: on­ly those on the elec­toral list are el­i­gi­ble to vote and vot­ing will be at polling sta­tions des­ig­nat­ed for the con­stituen­cy in which their name ap­pears on the fi­nal list.

The po­lit­i­cal leader post has al­ready been filled by Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who was un­op­posed when nom­i­na­tions closed on June 2. Fifty oth­er can­di­dates are con­test­ing the re­main­ing 15 ex­ec­u­tive posts.

At­tor­ney Roger Boynes, who is con­test­ing for gen­er­al sec­re­tary, yes­ter­day wrote Beck­les ex­press­ing con­cern about the lack of elec­tion rules and the ad­van­tage in­cum­bents pos­sess­ing “lists” with con­tact in­for­ma­tion for mem­bers have over in­de­pen­dents.

He called on Beck­les to in­ter­vene to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion. Beck­les did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia’s query on Boynes’ let­ter.

Beck­les was the fea­tured speak­er at the re­cent launch of the “One PNM” slate, which is con­test­ing and in­cludes six in­cum­bents and eight new­com­er con­tes­tants.

Al­so con­test­ing is the Peo­ple’s Cham­pi­ons slate seek­ing six posts. It’s led by at­tor­ney Farai Hove Ma­sai­sai, who is seek­ing the chair­man­ship. Boynes is among 34 peo­ple con­test­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly.

Yes­ter­day, the PNM Change­mak­ers anony­mous group, which has been slam­ming cer­tain in­cum­bents on the One PNM slate, backed Boynes for gen­er­al sec­re­tary, slam­ming in­cum­bent Fos­ter Cum­mings’ record.

“We chal­lenge Fos­ter Cum­mings to stop hid­ing be­hind the ex­cuse of not an­swer­ing to a ‘name­less, face­less group.’ We are not name­less. We are the PNM mem­ber­ship. And we dare him to re­spond truth­ful­ly and open­ly to T&T and to the PNM ...”

Sun­day’s vot­ing will be done at polling sta­tions in all 41 con­stituen­cies from 8 am to 6 pm. Re­sults will be giv­en that night.

Any is­sues aris­ing dur­ing vot­ing will be record­ed by the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer. The con­stituen­cy mem­ber­ship List, which will be at all sta­tions, is a con­sol­i­da­tion of the pre­lim­i­nary list and the sup­ple­men­tary list.

Col­lec­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of sig­nage for Sun­day’s ex­er­cise is to­mor­row morn­ing at PNM’s Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain head of­fice.

Beck­les and elect­ed of­fi­cials will be of­fi­cial­ly in­stalled at PNM’s June 29 con­ven­tion.