Sto­ries by

Gail Alexan­der

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment will par­tic­i­pate in any re­count the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress wants in any seat - but it won’t change the Gen­er­al Elec­tion re­sults, says PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings.

And the PNM’s Moru­ga unit is in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether a lapse in elec­tion day ma­chin­ery caused the par­ty to lose that seat, says Moru­ga con­stituen­cy chair­man David Trim

Both spoke yes­ter­day when asked by the T&T Guardian about Mon­day’s elec­tion re­sults and the UNC call for a re­count in five seats.

The PNM won 22 of the 41 seats at stake to the UNC’s 19. The par­ty lost Moru­ga to the UNC, re­duc­ing its orig­i­nal hold­ing of 23 seats to 22, rais­ing con­cerns about how it will gov­ern in the new term.

De­spite its five-seat lead in the 2015-2020 term, the PNM had dif­fi­cul­ty pass­ing some spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion in Par­lia­ment due to lack of UNC sup­port.

Yes­ter­day, Cum­mings not­ed that he had won the La Hor­quet­ta seat with 9,392 votes to UNC can­di­date Jear­lean John’s 7,294.

“Does the 2,098 gap be­tween the fig­ures seem like a ‘close’ fig­ure to you?” Cum­mings asked.

He felt the UNC’s give­aways to the elec­torate in the build-up to the elec­tion didn’t have an im­pact, “At least not in La Hor­quet­ta be­cause if it did, they would have won.”

“We won the elec­tions, we’re com­fort­able with the re­sults and we’ll con­tin­ue to do the work we’ve been de­liv­er­ing to the coun­try as we’re con­vinced we did an ex­cel­lent job in the last five years.”

On why the PNM lost Moru­ga af­ter so many re­sources were pumped in­to the con­stituen­cy - in­clud­ing agro-pro­cess­ing and oth­er projects - Cum­mings said, “We may have lost Moru­ga but we won the gov­ern­ment. We went in­to the elec­tion to re­turn the par­ty to gov­ern­ment and we suc­ceed­ed in do­ing that.”

On whether the re­duced three-seat ma­jor­i­ty would stymie the PNM’s de­vel­op­ment plans, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Cum­mings said, “We didn’t have a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty lev­el in the last term and we did very well, so we press on.”

Asked what re­duced win­ning vote lev­els in some of the par­ty’s “safe seats,” Cum­mings added, “We’ve won the elec­tion, right now we’re cel­e­brat­ing and we’re fo­cused on go­ing for­ward. This is a first-past-the-post sys­tem and who gets the ma­jor­i­ty of seats wins the gov­ern­ment. With that sys­tem, the pop­u­lar vote doesn’t put you in­to gov­ern­ment.

Cum­mings re­ferred oth­er queries to PNM chair­man Colm Im­bert on a pos­si­ble chal­lenge to UNC Princes Town can­di­date Bar­ry Padarath’s nom­i­na­tion. The par­ty claims Padarath signed the wrong can­di­date form and re­cent­ly hint­ed at le­gal chal­lenge to this.

He de­clined com­ment on PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s hint this may eas­i­ly be his last term.

“I was in la Hor­quet­ta and didn’t get his full speech,” Cum­mings said.

PNM cam­paign man­ag­er Ro­han Sinanan didn’t an­swer calls nor did Moru­ga co-or­di­na­tor An­dre Mon­teil or can­di­date Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters. Oth­er PNM of­fi­cials at­trib­uted the sit­u­a­tion to an “an­ti-gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ment” in the con­stituen­cy and a no-show by cer­tain Bar­rack­pore sec­tors where PNM had com­plet­ed a ceme­tery project.

Con­stituen­cy chair­man Trim said he couldn’t give an of­fi­cial rea­son yet since a post-mortem is be­ing done on the out­come.

“We’re not cer­tain. We’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing whether a lapse in elec­tion day ma­chin­ery in some ar­eas con­tributed to the loss. The UNC’s give­aways in the ar­eas, that may have im­pact­ed at some point, but it’s too ear­ly to tell ex­act­ly what it was,” Trim said.

Trim said his unit was await­ing the of­fi­cial EBC re­sult on that seat since he said when the team last checked on Mon­day night - be­fore the last box ar­rived - there was a 700-vote gap be­tween Pe­ters’ votes and UNC can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin’s.

“If the mar­gin is 300 votes or so, we might de­ter­mine if we may need a re­count - that might be a pos­si­bil­i­ty, we don’t know. If not we’ll re­group and work to­wards (2022) Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.’’