PNM constituency elections start today, end on July 31

Gail Alexan­der

The PNM's Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Mon­day put sys­tems in place for the par­ty's con­stituen­cy elec­tions to be­gin to­day (Wednes­day) and con­tin­ue in the 41 con­stituen­cies un­til Ju­ly 31.

To vote in the par­ty elec­tions, the PNM's Gen­er­al Coun­cil has waived any out­stand­ing mem­ber­ship fees from April 2024 to June 2025 and man­dat­ed that mem­bers pay dues for Ju­ly 2025 to June 2026.

This was con­firmed at Mon­day's spe­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House.

Mo­tions were ap­proved to put sys­tems in place for hold­ing the in­ter­nal polls. Mem­ber­ship dues are $10 per month.

One mo­tion stat­ed that the last par­ty group elec­tions were held from May to June 2024, when mem­bers were re­quired to pay dues up to the end of the first quar­ter of 2024. It not­ed that mem­ber­ship dues re­mained out­stand­ing from the sec­ond quar­ter of 2024 to the end of the sec­ond quar­ter of 2025.

Since par­ty group elec­tions were sched­uled to be­gin this month, the Coun­cil on Mon­day ap­proved waiv­ing any out­stand­ing mem­ber­ship dues for the pe­ri­ods April 1, 2024, to De­cem­ber 31, 2024, and Jan­u­ary 1, 2025, to June 30, 2025.

The mo­tion al­so stat­ed that, in or­der for par­ty group mem­bers to be el­i­gi­ble to vote in the elec­tions, they must pay mem­ber­ship dues for the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. This amounts to $120 per mem­ber.

Tu­na­puna mem­ber Krys­tal Hor­wood re­cent­ly wrote to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings call­ing for the post­pone­ment of the elec­tions un­til an au­dit of the mem­ber­ship reg­is­ter was com­plet­ed to ad­dress is­sues raised in pre­vi­ous years. Hor­wood un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the PNM's 2022 and 2025 ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions for the post of so­cial me­dia of­fi­cer. She has de­nied be­ing a non-fi­nan­cial mem­ber and pro­duced ev­i­dence of a $120 bank trans­fer to the PNM's Bal­isi­er House ac­count for her 2026 mem­ber­ship.

Al­so on Mon­day, the lead­er­ship agreed to ex­tend the dead­line for the sub­mis­sion of a re­port in­to is­sues raised in San Fer­nan­do East by SFE MP Bri­an Man­ning and SFE ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is.

Man­ning wrote to Cum­mings on June 16 out­lin­ing the is­sues. These in­clude con­cerns among SFE mem­bers over a per­ceived con­flict of in­ter­est in­volv­ing Alex­is be­cause she serves both as the PNM's as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary and as head of the SFE con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. Mem­bers have al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the re­cent ap­point­ment of a per­son in SFE with ties to an ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cial. There are al­so al­le­ga­tions that some SFE mem­bers are not act­ing in a man­ner that in­spires con­fi­dence in their in­tegri­ty.

A three-mem­ber team head­ed by PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus was ap­point­ed last week to con­duct the in­quiry and al­so ex­am­ine a June 10 let­ter sent to Cum­mings by Alex­is. The team was sched­uled to sub­mit its re­port by yes­ter­day (June 30).

How­ev­er, Man­ning said the time­frame for the probe was too short. He added that he would co-op­er­ate with any in­quiry con­duct­ed by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil rather than a team ap­point­ed by the PNM's Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive, of which Alex­is is a mem­ber.

As a re­sult, two Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­bers were added to the three-mem­ber in­quiry team on Mon­day, and the dead­line for its re­port has been ex­tend­ed to Ju­ly 14 from yes­ter­day (June 30).

Mon­day's Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing al­so marked the first an­niver­sary of Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les' tenure as po­lit­i­cal leader.