The PNM’s co-or­di­na­tors for the re­cent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign meet to­mor­row (Fri­day) to do a post-mortem of Mon­day’s elec­tion re­sults - and some in charge of San­gre Grande have claimed UNC won it be­cause of al­leged “in­duce­ments.”

But PNM San­gre Grande co-or­di­na­tor In­dar Paras­ram who made the claim on Tues­day said this was al­leged to him and he wasn’t pur­su­ing a probe of it.

Paras­ram (PNM’s elec­tions Of­fi­cer and URP Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor) said the al­le­ga­tion was brought to him dur­ing Mon­day’s elec­tion. Guardian Me­dia had asked why the PNM lost the seat which the par­ty had tar­get­ted and in­to which PNM had pumped great re­sources re­cent­ly. It was where PNM’s fi­nal pub­lic meet­ing was held last Thurs­day at­tract­ing a crowd which PN­Mites claimed num­bered “thou­sands”.

But in Mon­day’s poll, PNM lost the seat to the UNC.

Paras­ram said the UNC got about 30,000 plus votes to the PNM’s 28,000 plus. Why?

Paras­ram in­sist­ed while the PNM ran a “su­pe­ri­or cam­paign” and its votes in the area in­creased, there was greater in­crease for the UNC es­pe­cial­ly in San­gre Grande north. He added UNC votes in their strong­hold ar­eas helped them through.

Pressed on why PNM’s ex­ten­sive at­ten­tion to the area didn’t work, Paras­ram then claimed he’d nev­er “seen UNC ma­chin­ery when he was on the ground” and on Mon­day the in­duce­ment al­le­ga­tion was brought to him. He said the in­for­ma­tion was con­veyed to an EBC of­fi­cer, “But I don’t want it in­ves­ti­gat­ed, I’m just say­ing what hap­pened. What would a probe do now?”

Paras­ram added, “Af­ter Fri­day’s post-mortem, I’ll re­port to the par­ty on what I think should hap­pen in fu­ture.”

He said PNM deputy leader and Na­tion­al Cam­paign Man­ag­er Ro­han Sinanan wasn’t at PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters on Mon­day night since he was with him in San­gre Grande.

Sinanan ad­mit­ted on tele­vi­sion Tues­day the UNC “did im­prove” in the poll, but claimed UNC made no im­pact in the East-West cor­ri­dor and if one couldn’t do so, a par­ty couldn’t win a gen­er­al elec­tion.”

He at­trib­uted the PNM’s San­gre Grande loss to the UNC hold­ing on to ar­eas where it nor­mal­ly en­joyed sup­port. Sinanan ad­mit­ted that in San Fer­nan­do, the Petrotrin clo­sure may have im­pact­ed “some out­comes” there. Sinanan said PNM will do “some se­ri­ous analy­sis “ to de­ter­mine the way for its 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion strat­e­gy. But Sinanan didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s queries sent via What­sApp on what caused the Grande loss af­ter so much PNM ef­fort, whether state­ments by him­self or oth­ers turned vot­ers off and what ben­e­fit PNM ob­tained from the in­put of ex- UNC MP Collin Par­tap.

Par­tap be­gan as­sist­ing PNM co-or­di­na­tion in Sep­tem­ber in Cu­mu­to ar­eas- where he’d been UNC MP in 2010 to 2015. He al­so de­nounced the UNC. Par­tap and for­mer PNM MP Roger Boynes, an­oth­er San­gre Grande co-or­di­na­tor didn’t re­ply to our calls.

On the Cal­i­for­nia- Pt Lisas seat which the UNC had been very wor­ried about los­ing, Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste- Primus who said she played a promi­nent role in mo­bil­is­ing, said the PNM went in­to UNC ar­eas where it nev­er had be­fore, “Every­where we went there were drainage is­sues and peo­ple com­plained the coun­cil­lor didn’t per­form but they said to us de­spite is­sues, they were vot­ing for the par­ty - UNC. We lost by 400 votes.”

PNM of­fi­cials al­so said they’d not­ed that PPM ‘s Cleve­land Gar­cia had re­ceived 353 votes in Wood­brook where he’d been a for­mer PNM coun­cil­lor.

Nev­er­the­less, the PNM’s Port-of-Spain cam­paign - co-or­di­nat­ed by Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald - brought home the 12 seats, they said.