Gail Alexan­der

There is now grave con­cern for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s chances in na­tion­al elec­tions ahead, fol­low­ing a land­slide vic­to­ry by in­cum­bent Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sun­day.

This is the view of un­suc­cess­ful lead­er­ship can­di­date Karen Nunez-Tesheira, par­tic­u­lar­ly af­ter a com­bi­na­tion of neg­a­tive as­pects af­fect­ing Row­ley’s over­whelm­ing re­sults.

The re­sults of PNM’s three days of vot­ing—from the pre­vi­ous week­end up to last Sun­day—were giv­en by the par­ty’s Elec­tion Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day.

Row­ley re­tained the par­ty’s lead­er­ship with 8,424 votes—an over­whelm­ing mar­gin over Nunez-Tesheira’s 345.

Row­ley al­so de­feat­ed oth­er lead­er­ship can­di­dates, at­tor­ney Ronald Boynes (who re­ceived 243) and Ju­nior Bar­rack (99).

The Lead­ers in Ser­vice team, which Row­ley had praised, al­so swept all of the 12 po­si­tions con­test­ed. Four posts were un­op­posed.

The vic­to­ry gave Row­ley an­oth­er four-year term un­til 2026. He was first elect­ed leader in 2010 and held the post in in­ter­nal elec­tions in 2014 and 2018. On this oc­ca­sion, how­ev­er, he’s made it clear the PNM “is in tran­si­tion.”

In the PNM’s 2014 in­ter­nal elec­tion, when Row­ley was un­suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged by Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, he won with 18,121 votes to Beck­les’ 1,315 in an 81,000 mem­ber­ship. In the 2018 in­ter­nals, Row­ley was un­chal­lenged. His lat­est lead­er­ship vic­to­ry came at a time when the PNM cur­rent­ly has 105,894 mem­bers, ac­cord­ing to ESC fig­ures re­leased two weeks ago.

Row­ley didn’t re­ply to What­sApp queries on his feel­ings af­ter win­ning, the num­bers won by and his work ahead.

A PNM member at the polling booth at the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah, during the party’s 50th Convention on Sunday.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

How­ev­er, vic­to­ri­ous new chair­man Stu­art Young, who re­ceived a to­tal of 8,398 votes, sec­ond in num­bers to the Prime Min­is­ter’s votes, sent “big con­grat­u­la­tions” to all.

Nunez-Tesheira, in her cam­paign, had called out the cur­rent lead­er­ship, cit­ed al­leged is­sues with the vot­ing and un­der­took an un­suc­cess­ful le­gal bid.

Af­ter yes­ter­day’s re­sults, Nunez-Tesheira said she wasn’t re­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed.

“I’d had an idea of how the sit­u­a­tion might be. But what sur­prised me great­ly was the low num­ber of vot­er turnout on the ac­tu­al con­ven­tion day—814. I think peo­ple ex­pect­ed be­tween 2,500 and 4,000 vot­er turnout. This isn’t good. It’s ei­ther peo­ple vot­ed be­fore or didn’t qual­i­fy to vote.”

Nunez-Tesheira is, how­ev­er, more con­cerned at what oth­er num­bers sig­ni­fy for the PNM and its suc­cess in na­tion­al elec­tions ahead.

“While the leader won, it doesn’t look good for him. I looked at the vot­er turnout in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy over the pre­vi­ous week­end’s two days of vot­ing —188 and that’s con­cern­ing since there must be thou­sands of reg­is­tered vot­ers there and they were not heav­i­ly af­fect­ed by flood­ing. It’s not a good sign,” she said.

PNM political leader candidate Karen Nunez-Tesheira outside the Grand Stand, Queen’s Park Savannah during the PNM’s 50th Convention on Sunday.

GAIL ALEXANDER

“Al­so, he ap­peared to have got­ten sub­stan­tial­ly less votes in this elec­tion than he did when he was last chal­lenged (in 2014). Again, it doesn’t bode well lead­ing the par­ty in­to the next elec­tions. So, ac­cord­ing­ly, I have grave reser­va­tions for the PNM in na­tion­al elec­tions.”

She said she was look­ing at a way in which she can be of help go­ing for­ward.

“But it’s too ear­ly to say. I’m a PNM mem­ber, so I’ll even­tu­al­ly come to see how best I can make a fur­ther con­tri­bu­tion to the par­ty go­ing for­ward.”

New PRO Faris Al-Rawi and gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings didn’t re­ply to What­sApp queries on when the new ex­ec­u­tive would meet, its pri­or­i­ties and when they would re­turn to the ”ground” as promised dur­ing LIS’s cam­paign.

Boynes: Dis­en­chant­ment

out there

De­feat­ed PNM lead­er­ship can­di­date Ronald Boynes says his con­cerns about the par­ty’s elec­toral list and fair­ness of the elec­toral process re­main.

“An in­de­pen­dent body to con­duct the elec­tion is ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary,” he said af­ter the re­sults were an­nounced.

Boynes in­tends to con­tin­ue press­ing for the is­sues he raised in the cam­paign and he’s pre­pared to work with the in­com­ing ex­ec­u­tive.

“We need to in­spire the 90 per cent-plus who didn’t par­tic­i­pate to be­come in­volved in the process so that the par­ty can be­come ready for the elec­toral chal­lenges ahead,” Boyes said.

“The vot­er turnout is ex­treme­ly low, es­pe­cial­ly for vot­ing held over three days. We have to mo­bilise and mo­ti­vate our par­ty. A lot of peo­ple are dis­en­chant­ed and we need to reach them. Need­less to say, the mar­gin of vic­to­ry was quite sig­nif­i­cant in the con­text of a vot­er turnout of less than 10 per cent.”

Bar­rack, the oth­er de­feat­ed lead­er­ship can­di­date, said, “If I got 99 votes, it means 99 peo­ple heard my mes­sage and agreed with me and I’m hap­py for that. I didn’t have a maxi bring­ing peo­ple.”

On whether Barack he’d “come again,” he said, “I’m 63 ...but I’ll go in­to the com­mu­ni­ties and get the mes­sage out over time on what the par­ty should be do­ing. There’s a mas­sive lev­el of dis­en­chant­ment, so I’ll be hit­ting the road in the next month to lift the con­scious­ness.”

Oth­er suc­cess­ful can­di­dates were:

Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly (vice chair­man) 7,928 votes.

Pa­tri­cia Alex­is (as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary) 5,607 votes.

Kaz­im Ho­sein (trea­sur­er) 7,537 votes.

Kwasi Robin­son (so­cial me­dia of­fi­cer) 6,288 votes.

Ter­rence Beepath (field of­fi­cer) 7,165 votes.

Max­ine Richards (wel­fare of­fi­cer) 6901 votes.

Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing (ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer) 7,807 votes.