PNM elections officer: Sando East issues sorted outwith Manning’s input

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Is­sues with­in the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ap­pear to be near­ing res­o­lu­tion, with par­ty groups set to be­gin in­ter­nal elec­tions on Sun­day, ahead of the elec­tion of a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive on Oc­to­ber 15.

PNM Elec­tions Of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram, who heads the team over­see­ing the San Fer­nan­do East in­ter­nal elec­tions, said yes­ter­day that stake­hold­ers reached a con­sen­sus dur­ing a meet­ing on Mon­day.

"We had a very cor­dial meet­ing with all of the par­ty group chair­men and sec­re­taries, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning, and oth­er con­stituen­cy stake­hold­ers, with a unan­i­mous po­si­tion by all to­wards re­solv­ing the is­sues," Paras­ram told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

"As far as I'm con­cerned, that is the end of the in­ter­nal is­sues in San Fer­nan­do East. Those mat­ters have come to an end," he added.

Paras­ram's com­ments come af­ter months of in­ter­nal dis­putes with­in the con­stituen­cy.

In June, for­mer con­stituen­cy chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is wrote to the par­ty's lead­er­ship rais­ing con­cerns about Man­ning's ac­tiv­i­ties in the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing al­le­ga­tions that par­al­lel struc­tures were be­ing es­tab­lished. Man­ning, in turn, sub­mit­ted com­plaints on be­half of mem­bers re­gard­ing Alex­is' al­leged han­dling of con­stituen­cy mat­ters.

A team led by deputy leader Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate both com­plaints, while an­oth­er head­ed by Ernest Es­delle con­duct­ed a ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise of par­ty groups af­ter Man­ning al­leged that the Alex­is-led ex­ec­u­tive had re­moved long­stand­ing groups and re­placed them with new ones.

The re­ports from both com­mit­tees were large­ly un­favourable to Man­ning's po­si­tion. Thir­ty par­ty groups were deemed valid, while 15 were ex­clud­ed from the process.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced a su­per­vi­so­ry team for the con­stituen­cy elec­tions head­ed by Paras­ram and com­pris­ing par­ty of­fi­cials Sharon Fe­lix, Cur­tis Shade, Max­ine Richards and Al­isha Ro­mano.

The PNM's Gen­er­al Coun­cil last Fri­day ap­proved the start of par­ty group elec­tions in San Fer­nan­do East from Sep­tem­ber 4, with the process to con­clude by Oc­to­ber 10. How­ev­er, fol­low­ing Mon­day's dis­cus­sions, the timetable was ad­just­ed.

Ex­plain­ing the out­come of Mon­day's meet­ing, Paras­ram, a mem­ber of the PNM's Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive, said all par­ties were fo­cused on mov­ing for­ward.

"It was an ex­ceed­ing­ly cor­dial meet­ing. Every­one, in­clud­ing Mr Man­ning, was on the same page. The PNM is do­ing its work, and we go for­ward from here," he said.

The par­ty groups re­quest­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­quired sev­en days' no­tice be­fore hold­ing elec­tions. As a re­sult, it was agreed that elec­tions would be­gin on Sun­day rather than last Fri­day as orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled.

The con­stituen­cy's Women's League and Youth League elec­tions are set for Oc­to­ber 3, while the process will cul­mi­nate in the elec­tion of a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive on Oc­to­ber 15, five days af­ter the dead­line ini­tial­ly ap­proved by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

Man­ning, who said he had not re­ceived copies of the re­ports, re­ject­ed the find­ings com­mu­ni­cat­ed to him and ques­tioned the le­git­i­ma­cy of the in­ves­tiga­tive teams, ar­gu­ing that such bod­ies are not pro­vid­ed for un­der the par­ty's con­sti­tu­tion. He al­so chal­lenged the ex­clu­sion of cer­tain par­ty groups, con­tend­ing that the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process was flawed and breached prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

He had called for de­tails re­gard­ing the omit­ted groups and sug­gest­ed ei­ther post­pon­ing the elec­tions un­til out­stand­ing is­sues were re­solved or plac­ing the process un­der the su­per­vi­sion of an in­de­pen­dent body.

How­ev­er, Man­ning told the Guardian on Tues­day that the is­sues were be­ing ad­dressed in­ter­nal­ly, a po­si­tion he main­tained yes­ter­day.

Among those ex­pect­ed to con­test is Hazel Man­ning, wid­ow of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and long­time San Fer­nan­do East MP Patrick Man­ning, who has in­di­cat­ed her will­ing­ness to seek the post of con­stituen­cy chair­man.

San Fer­nan­do East is the fi­nal PNM con­stituen­cy yet to com­plete its in­ter­nal elec­tions, a process re­quired ahead of the par­ty's con­ven­tion in No­vem­ber.

Se­nior par­ty of­fi­cials al­so told the T&T Guardian that the mat­ter is be­ing re­solved in­ter­nal­ly and that par­ty group elec­tions will com­mence short­ly.

Mean­while, af­ter PNM mem­ber An­to­nio Ross ac­cused Man­ning on Face­book of be­ing "eco­nom­i­cal with the truth" in a re­cent post, Man­ning re­it­er­at­ed that the par­ty's is­sues are be­ing han­dled in­ter­nal­ly. He added that he had ex­plained the cir­cum­stances and apol­o­gised to those of­fend­ed by the in­ci­dent, de­scrib­ing it as an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion that was "not who we are."