Gail Alexan­der

Well known Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Ari­ma stal­wart and con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Bob­by Charles, says PNM con­stituen­cies must be the ones to de­cide if they want la­dy vice chair­man Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son to con­test the PNM lead­er­ship in 2014 or not.Charles made the com­ment as he came to the de­fence of Beck­les-Robin­son af­ter she was crit­i­cised by some par­ty quar­ters for her ap­pear­ance at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) cur­ry duck func­tion last week­end.

The sit­u­a­tion has com­pound­ed spec­u­la­tion that Beck­les-Robin­son may chal­lenge PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for the lead­er­ship in next year's in­ter­nal elec­tion. She has not said an out­right "no" on con­test­ing and in fact was quot­ed ear­li­er this week as say­ing she didn't see "a prob­lem with her con­test­ing the lead­er­ship."

Charles, who has been a PN­Mite for 45 years, was sec­re­tary of the PNM's Ari­ma unit for 23 years and is cur­rent­ly elec­tions of­fi­cer of the unit. He said he was the one who got Beck­les-Robin­son to join the PNM years ago."Why is she be­ing crit­i­cised for stop­ping at a func­tion that hap­pened to be held by the UNC?" Charles asked."Peo­ple don't know how much of a com­mu­ni­ty spir­it­ed per­son Pen­ny is. She'll be pass­ing in her car and see peo­ple play­ing all fours, and stop and play a hand with them.

"Her Christ­mas par­ties fete every child from La Fil­lette to Blan­chisseusse. When she was a child, her fam­i­ly would send her to mar­ket at 9 am and she'd come home 2 pm - she was so out­go­ing."He added, "So if she stopped in when she saw an event at a venue owned by a PN­Mite (Vi­jay Ram­lal) and it hap­pened to be a UNC thing, she shouldn't go in? Even though both sides ar­gue in Par­lia­ment, when they ad­journ to the (Par­lia­ment ) tea­room, every­one is cor­dial.

"That's be­ing civ­il. (Is it that) peo­ple have to be un­civilised if they're in pol­i­tics and not talk to each oth­er. How would any­thing be worked out?"Dis­miss­ing "non-per­for­mance" al­le­ga­tions, Charles said Beck­les-Robin­son had co-or­di­nat­ed PNM's Ari­ma lo­cal gov­ern­ment can­di­dates well enough to bring home all the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion seats and as­sist oth­ers to vic­to­ry along the East-West cor­ri­dor.

"She did so well that PN­Mites who'd parked up in 2010 vot­ed again and even peo­ple who were COP mem­bers gave us their vote. She was the rea­son PNM did well in some cor­ri­dor mar­gin­als. I'm the elec­tions of­fi­cer, I should know," Charles said.He added, "I'm for peace in the par­ty, so my view is con­stituen­cies should be the ones to say if they want Pen­ny to con­test the lead­er­ship or not, let the peo­ple say what they want."

Beck­les-Robin­son was pub­licly laud­ed in a press ad­ver­tise­ment this week by the "Friends of Ari­ma" group. The group thanked Beck­les-Robin­son for her Sen­ate con­tri­bu­tion af­ter she was axed from the Up­per House by Row­ley last week. Fitzger­ald Hinds, who was al­so re­moved, was reap­point­ed this week to fill in for Faris al Rawi, who went to South Africa with Row­ley for the Nel­son Man­dela memo­r­i­al.

Con­tact­ed on the ad cam­paign, Bar­bara Ryan, a mem­ber of PNM's Ari­ma ex­ec­u­tive, said the ex­ec­u­tive had noth­ing to do with the ad. Rather, she said it was placed by peo­ple whose lives Beck­les-Robin­son had touched.

Ryan said, "It was done by var­i­ous peo­ple and small busi­ness­es in and around Ari­ma prop­er, Pin­to Road, San­ta Rosa, Waller­field and oth­er near­by ar­eas in the cor­ri­dor who recog­nise her val­ue and the work she has been do­ing, and who clear­ly felt hurt at the way she was treat­ed. It is my un­der­stand­ing this was their way of say­ing 'thank you' to her and ex­press­ing their sup­port for her. It's an in­di­ca­tion of the love peo­ple have for her."

How­ev­er, chair­man of PNM's Ari­ma unit, Cagney Cas­simire, dis­tanced him­self from the "Friends of Ari­ma" ad, say­ing his unit wasn't in­volved and didn't know who did it.