Gail Alexan­der

Jah-Keb­ba Browne, chair­man of PNM’s Laven­tille West Youth League, has de­nied that peo­ple were “left out” of last Sun­day’s vot­ing for a gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nee or that there was “in­ter­fer­ence” or “bac­cha­nal” af­ter MP Fitzger­ald Hinds re­ceived 18 votes to chal­lenger Ka­reem Mar­celle’s 14.

“The false in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lat­ing won’t dis­cour­age my­self or my ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers—they’re go­ing to ‘go hard’ or go home,” Browne added. The Laven­tille West is­sue was among those in PNM as Fri­day’s dead­line ap­proach­es for sub­mis­sion of nom­i­na­tions from 15 PNM-held con­stituen­cies.

About half of the in­cum­bents in those seats are so far un­op­posed. Oth­ers, like Hinds, are fac­ing chal­lengers. This in­cludes La Brea, where Brighton Ves­signy PNM coun­cil­lor Jil­lon Lewis has con­sent­ed to a nom­i­na­tion for the con­stituen­cy cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by PNM MP Stephen McLashie.

The PNM on Oc­to­ber 21 called for nom­i­na­tions from 15 con­stituen­cies held by PNM MPs.

Nom­i­nees—whether in­cum­bent or not—are pro­posed with the sup­port of par­ty groups as well as Women’s League and Youth League units in the re­spec­tive 15 ar­eas. Screen­ing is ex­pect­ed to be­gin at month’s end.

In Laven­tille West, the ex­ec­u­tive had no­ti­fied mem­bers since last week that those who had of­fered them­selves for nom­i­na­tion were Hinds, Dr Kadelle Jes­samy, and Mar­celle.

Browne yes­ter­day said, “The meet­ing was due to start at 4 pm, but I as chair­man closed the doors at 4.16 pm. Our ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer, the last to ar­rive, en­tered at 4.15 pm. I called the meet­ing to or­der at 4.18 pm. So there was no ques­tion of start­ing ear­ly and ‘leav­ing out’ peo­ple.” Browne said while she was chair­ing the meet­ing, coun­cil­lor Adana Grif­fith-Gor­don was “con­stant­ly knock­ing” on the door, but when she saw the meet­ing was in progress, Grif­fith-Gor­don left.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, Grif­fith-Gor­don re­ferred all mat­ters per­tain­ing to nom­i­na­tion to the con­stituen­cy’s chair­man.

Browne al­so added, “It must be stressed that I chaired our meet­ing—no ‘PRO of Hinds’ chaired my meet­ing. Youths were giv­en the op­tion of vot­ing via se­cret bal­lot or show of hands. Most vot­ed for se­cret bal­lot. I in­formed them of the three nom­i­nees—Dr Jes­samy and Messrs Hinds and Mar­celle. I read the bios of Mr Hinds and Dr Jes­samy. My Field Of­fi­cer read Mr Mar­celle’s bio.

“I was as­sist­ed in count­ing the bal­lots by the con­stituen­cy’s PRO along­side a com­mit­tee mem­ber. The PRO un­fold­ed the bal­lot pa­pers, and we count­ed aloud in front of mem­bers. There was no in­ter­fer­ence from any­one—I chaired my meet­ing. Peo­ple had the op­tion of vot­ing for whom they want­ed, and no one raised any is­sues.”

Laven­tille West’s se­lec­tion of a nom­i­nee will be fi­nalised Thurs­day af­ter its Women’s League re­does its se­lec­tion ex­er­cise on Thurs­day.

Its first meet­ing last Mon­day was deemed by the Laven­tille West ex­ec­u­tive to have had ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and a lack of no­tice to all mem­bers about it. The ex­ec­u­tive man­dat­ed a sec­ond “prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed” meet­ing.

Stal­warts—Democ­ra­cy at work

PNM stal­wart and po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Fer­di­nand ‘Fer­die’ Fer­reira said it was not un­usu­al for the PNM to have com­pet­i­tive can­di­dates in the par­ty. He said Hinds him­self has been re­ject­ed by the PNM in the past. 

“One of the things the par­ty must re­mem­ber, in­clud­ing Fitzger­ald Hinds, is that the PNM is a par­ty built on par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy. At the screen­ing in 1995, the late Patrick Man­ning was not too kind­ly dis­posed to Fitzger­ald Hinds. His pref­er­ence was for Adol­phus Daniel. How­ev­er, at the con­clu­sion of the screen­ing, the screen­ing com­mit­tee sup­port­ed Fitzger­ald Hinds. Patrick Man­ning said, ‘Well, that’s the de­ci­sion of the screen­ing com­mit­tee; I’ll take it to the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive and rec­om­mend Hinds as the can­di­date.’ Hinds won the seat; the PNM lost the elec­tion, but if you re­call, Hinds was not a min­is­ter un­der Patrick Man­ning.”

Fer­reira said this prac­tice dat­ed back to 1971, when this coun­try’s first Prime Min­is­ter, PNM founder Dr Er­ic Williams, re­ject­ed five nom­i­nees from dif­fer­ent con­stituen­cies: Vic­tor Camp­bell for Ma­yaro, Carl­ton Gomes for San Juan, Brens­ley Bar­row for Port-of-Spain North, Sham Mo­hammed for San Juan East, and Li­onel Robin­son for To­co/Man­zanil­la. He ex­plained that Dr Williams in­struct­ed the screen­ing com­mit­tees to present al­ter­na­tives, but all five re­sub­mit­ted the same can­di­dates unan­i­mous­ly, lead­ing Dr Williams to con­cede.

“What is hap­pen­ing here is not un­usu­al. What is un­usu­al is the lapse of mem­o­ry or the se­ri­ous at­tempt to prop­er­ly do the re­search. Let the con­stituen­cy, as the par­ty con­sti­tu­tion states, de­cide on the can­di­date of their choice. Dr Williams re­ject­ed; he called them mill­stones, and not on­ly that, dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign he did not speak on any of their plat­forms, but he did not in­ter­fere with the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy of the par­ty, “ he said, re­call­ing that nei­ther one of the five were giv­en min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios. 

Mean­while, PNM stal­wart Mar­i­lyn Gor­don al­so said that what was tak­ing place in Laven­tille West is sim­ply democ­ra­cy at work. 

“It is all a part of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process that has been fol­lowed since 1956 in the PNM.”