The Tribune

THE campaign to elect Dr Hubert Minnis as leader of the FNM has made a number of allegations - including an unfair process and breaches of the party’s constitution.

A statement issued last night questioned why an election of officers was allowed in Free Town, and raised concerns over appointments to the convention committee.

The statement, issued by Minnis campaign chairman Burton Miller, said: “A meeting was called by (party chairman) Dr Sands at FNM headquarters on Thursday, May 23, that included party leader Michael Pintard and three of his campaign executives, former Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis and three of his campaign executives, FNM secretary general Serfent Rolle, FNM deputy treasurer Inga Bostwick as well as two observers, former Cabinet Minister Dion Foulkes and former Cabinet Minister Renward Wells.

“One of the issues we presented during this meeting was the decision of the leader and the chairman to organise and supervise the election of officers in a number of constituency associations after the Central Council of the FNM had ratified the date of the one-day voting convention and after the close of official nominations. After writing the chairman regarding this matter, the chairman assured the media as well as our campaign that all such elections would cease with the exception of Free Town. We could not understand why elections would be allowed in Free Town if they were being discontinued in all other constituencies. We could only conclude that the leader and chairman felt comfortable that these new officers in Free Town will all vote in favour of Mr Pintard.”

The statement added: “We were further shocked to learn the party went ahead and scheduled constituency association meetings where a number of candidates running for national office on June 1 were allowed to serve as speakers directly to election delegates to the disadvantage of all other candidates who are also running.

“We expressed that we found this decision deeply troubling as these guest speakers were all known supporters of Michael Pintard, some of whom would have subsequently publicly endorsed Mr Pintard.”

Mr Miller added: “Another very serious matter our campaign presented involved the appointed members to the official campaign convention committee, whose names had not been disclosed to us. When asked for the names of the individuals that comprise this committee, we were once again confronted with the fact that many of these committee members are also candidates running for office and that many if not all are known supporters of Michael Pintard.”

Mr Miller said this would mean that Mr Pintard’s supporters would be the only ones to have first-hand access to information regarding the convention including its venue, budget and schedule.

Mr Miller added: “Some of this information was released to us upon our request at the meeting, but many candidates may not know to this date.”

He alleged this was “a deliberate attempt to keep Dr Minnis’ campaign and the campaigns of all other candidates who did not support Mr Pintard in the dark”.

He added: “To date we have also not been informed as to who will serve as the returning officers and who will oversee the count of ballots. We have also not been informed as to how many ballots are being prepared and printed”.

Mr Miller said: “One of the major concerns we expressed was our disappointment of the leadership of the party’s acknowledgement of their decision to deliberately breach the party’s constitution. The framers of the constitution clearly defined the important role that all categories of members play in the party. The chairman has, however, made it clear in the meeting that despite our presentation of the facts and the party’s constitution, that the leadership of the party will forge ahead and deliberately ignore the very clear words in the party’s constitution and permit legal ballots to be cast. This decision will greatly impact the integrity of the vote.”

Mr Miller said there was no official list of delegates submitted to the Minnis campaign which was “odd and unfair”.

He added: “The Secretary General Serfent Rolle promised to email us an unofficial list and did so but we are now less than a week away from this very important one day convention and we have yet to receive the official list of delegates. This inaction is a clear breach of Article 30(e) of the party’s Constitution, which guarantees fairness in the electoral process. It puts our campaign at a severe disadvantage and could only mean that Mr Pintard and his team have access to this list when no other candidates running including our team do not. This is a breach of trust, unconstitutional, biased, unacceptable and grossly unfair.”

He added: “We find this unbelievable that we are just days away from the vote and the party under the leadership of Michael Pintard and Duane Sands have not been able to confirm and ratify the official list of delegates who will be voting on June 1. There is considerable evidence the delegate list is in a terrible and confusing mess. We have seen this in North Andros, Fox Hill and other critical constituencies, and the evidence points to unfair interference in the delegate selection process.”

Mr Miller said: “This is a mess and this has never happened to our knowledge in recent history in the FNM.

“The upcoming Free National Movement One Day National Convention scheduled for Saturday June 1, should be a free and fair exercise in democracy and there should be no perceived or real evidence of unfairness in the voting process and any act of padding or fixing the register of voters should be discouraged.”