Chester Sam­bra­no

Just af­ter 5 pm yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his wife, Sharon Clarke-Row­ley, ar­rived at the South Diego Mar­tin Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre to vote in the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in­ter­nal elec­tions.

There was no line, so the Row­leys took just around five min­utes to cast their bal­lots.

When he emerged, Dr Row­ley said he was in­formed that the vot­ing process was "se­ri­ous­ly af­fect­ed" by the in­clement weath­er.

His com­ments matched what PNM Chair­man of the Elec­tions Su­per­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee An­tho­ny Roberts told Guardian Me­dia.

"We know that some of the polling sta­tions were ac­tive, not as ac­tive as we would like it to be, but in terms of num­bers, I am un­able to give you that," he said.

He said no polling sta­tion had to be closed, but se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion was be­ing giv­en to do­ing so in Ma­yaro.

"Be­cause the wa­ter was just ris­ing, but thank God it did not come up to the point that we had to close it,'' he added.

Roberts said it was un­clear how many peo­ple are ex­pect­ed to vote. How­ev­er, the en­tire mem­ber­ship is en­ti­tled to take part. That fig­ure, he said, is over 100,000 peo­ple.

Weath­er aside, Roberts said there were some of the "nor­mal" chal­lenges which come with elec­tions where peo­ple turn­ing up to vote are not able to lo­cate their names.

"Peo­ple would have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to check their names on the list be­fore so that the process would run smooth­ly, but we know our peo­ple, so they would not have checked and some of them on the day to vote would now be check­ing," he said.

He said there were in­stances where peo­ple's names were in polling sta­tions where they do not live.

"Peo­ple would have reg­is­tered in a par­tic­u­lar con­stituen­cy but over time they would have re­moved them­selves and lived else­where. Peo­ple are sup­posed to vote in the con­stituen­cy where they are reg­is­tered."

But as the polls re­open to­mor­row, Roberts urged mem­bers to come out to ex­er­cise their fran­chise. "Try and brave the weath­er and cast their vote for the can­di­dates of their choice," he said.

There are 16 po­si­tions up for grabs and can­di­date for po­lit­i­cal leader Karen Nunez-Tesheira said she would be vot­ing on De­cem­ber 4 at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah where the an­nu­al con­ven­tion will be held.

Nunez-Tesheira said she has been liv­ing in the St Ann's West Con­stituen­cy since 2005, but when she checked the list her polling sta­tion was lo­cat­ed in St Au­gus­tine where she lived pri­or.

"That is a good enough rea­son why you should have left it that way be­cause every­body knows where to go on the 4th, I am not too sure every­body knows where to go to­day (Sat­ur­day) and to­mor­row," she said.

Tesheira failed in her last-ditch ef­fort on Fri­day night to have the courts post­pone the elec­tions be­cause of the new three-day vot­ing process.

PM–Stay away from wa­ter cours­es

PNM in­ter­nal elec­tions aside, Dr Row­ley ex­pressed con­cern over the flood­ing and land­slides which ac­com­pa­nied the heavy rains.

Ear­li­er in the day, the PM is­sued a state­ment where he said the coun­try was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a bad weath­er emer­gency.

He lat­er ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia that the post was meant to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to be alert dur­ing in­clement weath­er.

"Be­cause any more rain we get now could on­ly con­tribute to more flood­ing be­cause there is no more per­co­la­tion tak­ing place is a straight case of a runoff," he said.

The Prime Min­is­ter ad­mit­ted that the rainy sea­son in this coun­try is be­com­ing more "chal­leng­ing" and prepa­ra­tions for the dry sea­son need to be pri­ori­tised.

How­ev­er, he said the main so­lu­tion is that peo­ple should choose wise­ly where they want to set­tle.

"We need to stay away from wa­ter cours­es, from banks, we have to be care­ful how we clear hill­sides and so on. But, usu­al­ly, when it is dry peo­ple are not rel­a­tive­ly co­op­er­a­tive with those things, but then when na­ture re­claims them if you are there, then all kinds of hard­ships could oc­cur, so that is where we could re­al­ly im­pact the sit­u­a­tion. In many in­stances, it is al­ready too late be­cause we've al­ready built com­mu­ni­ties in ar­eas which are ei­ther low-ly­ing or in wa­ter cours­es," he ex­plained.

Nev­er­the­less, Dr Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment and state agen­cies are stand­ing by to as­sist in any way they could when the dam­age as­sess­ments are com­plet­ed.