Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has de­scribed Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis’ vic­to­ry in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil in­ter­nal poll on Sun­day as a shock­er.

The for­mer To­ba­go West MP de­feat­ed ex-mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris, with pre­lim­i­nary re­sults show­ing she ob­tained 63 per cent of the votes.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day, Mo­hammed said Mor­ris seemed to have had the edge in a num­ber of cat­e­gories.

He said, un­like Cud­joe-Lewis, who ran in­de­pen­dent­ly, Mor­ris had the back­ing of his Team Uni­ty Slate.

Mor­ris was al­so sup­port­ed by a num­ber of par­ty stal­warts in­clud­ing for­mer chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles.

Mo­hammed dis­missed the turnout of just un­der 2,000 vot­ers as in­signif­i­cant, con­sid­er­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion and THA elec­tions are sev­er­al years away.

“What I think is the shock­er is that Sham­fa won. For most peo­ple, there was the ex­pec­ta­tion (Mor­ris would win). Kelvon had a slate,” he said.

Mo­hammed spec­u­lat­ed that en­dorse­ments from Charles and for­mer PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine may have worked against Mor­ris.

Both for­mer Coun­cil lead­ers clashed bit­ter­ly in the 2020 in­ter­nal elec­tions. How­ev­er, Mor­ris cam­paigned heav­i­ly on his abil­i­ty to uni­fy the mem­ber­ship, in­clud­ing those who did not see eye to eye.

De­spite an­tic­i­pat­ing his vic­to­ry, Mo­hammed said he al­ways held the be­lief that Mor­ris was not ready for lead­er­ship.

“He had not come of age for pick­ing up the man­tle of lead­er­ship. If he did, then he should have sur­vived that THA elec­tion.”

Mor­ris, the for­mer Dar­rel Spring/Whim rep­re­sen­ta­tive, lost his seat in the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions, which was won by the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty 15-0.

He de­scribed Cud­joe-Lewis as a sea­soned can­di­date and said he no­ticed a change in her de­meanour on the cam­paign trail.

Mo­hammed said Cud­joe-Lewis has the sup­port of PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and said he would not be sur­prised if she re­places Janelle John-Bates in the Sen­ate.

On the re­ports of bal­lot pa­pers run­ning out twice at Ply­mouth An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School polling sta­tion, Mo­hammed said the Coun­cil did not ex­pect to get close to 2,000 vot­ers.

“It is an in­di­rect ad­mis­sion they un­der­stand how the ground feels. Bal­lot pa­pers should not run out. It should have con­tin­gency plan.

“In elec­tions, you have to cater for an ex­treme­ly low, av­er­age and a very high turnout. You can’t make an er­ror in that re­gard. That was poor plan­ning.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said he is not im­pressed by the pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures when com­pared to the re­port­ed 10,000 el­i­gi­ble vot­ers.

He said, “It would seem to me that hard­ly any­body came out to vote. That is what it would seem to me. If you are talk­ing about un­der 2,000 vot­ers, then peo­ple did not come out to show their sup­port for the process, al­though Sham­fa seems to be say­ing the turnout was good.”

James said the par­ty should be trans­par­ent about its process if it in­tends to seek of­fice.

Al­though de­clin­ing to ad­dress her qual­i­ties as a leader, James de­scribed Cud­joe-Lewis as a very ar­tic­u­late politi­cian.

“She speaks with­out fear on be­half of the PNM. Peo­ple see her as some­body who could use their ar­tic­u­late­ness to ad­dress the is­sues both to the PNM and To­ba­go as a whole.”

Asked whether the par­ty can unite as both lead­er­ship can­di­dates had urged pri­or to the re­sults, Win­ford said, “That is more than pos­si­ble. PNM has done that over time and both can­di­dates have said they would be sup­port­ing the process on the way for­ward.”

How­ev­er, he has­tened to add that politi­cians have the propen­si­ty to say one thing and do the oth­er.

“Peo­ple change their minds; they say things when the re­sults are not clear then they have a way of back­ing down on the promis­es they have made. I ex­pect if they run their ship prop­er­ly that they could be­come a co­he­sive force in To­ba­go, but I am not gonna put my head on the block.”

He ad­vised the Coun­cil to clean up their vot­ing list, ex­press­ing some scep­ti­cism about its 10,000 mem­ber­ship.

He said this should have hap­pened long ago, but the par­ty con­tin­ued to de­lay, think­ing it would have won the last THA elec­tions.