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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

PNM campaign starts January 6

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Rules for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's lead­er­ship elec­tion, cur­rent­ly in draft form, will be ready ear­ly in the new year and par­ty cam­paign­ing for the in­ter­nal elec­tion is ex­pect­ed to be­gin in the first week of Jan­u­ary, PNM vice-chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day.She made the com­ment in re­sponse to ques­tions on why the rules were not pre­sent­ed at last Sat­ur­day's gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing af­ter chair­man Franklin Khan said the rules would have been re­leased then.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the elec­tions team, head­ed by Brigid An­nisette-George, was far ad­vanced on the task, though as­pects of the rules still need­ed clear­ing up. When com­plet­ed it will be seen by the lead­er­ship and coun­cil, she added.She was re­port­ed last Sun­day as say­ing the par­ty was ex­pect­ed to be­gin cam­paign walk­a­bouts for the in­ter­nal poll from Jan­u­ary 6.

PNM ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials yes­ter­day said a draft sched­ule of con­stituen­cy walk­a­bouts by in­cum­bent leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley be­gins from that date and in places where Row­ley had not been on walk­a­bouts.Ten­ta­tive tour dates be­tween Jan­u­ary 6-14 are in Port-of-Spain South, To­co/San­gre Grande, D'abadie/O'Meara, San Fer­nan­do East and Diego Mar­tin North/East.

Yes­ter­day, Dr Bose Shar­ma, of the To Pre­serve the Bal­isi­er group, said since the rules–or any date for the in­ter­nal poll–were not forth­com­ing as ex­pect­ed last Sat­ur­day, the group would await that be­fore an­nounc­ing its chal­lenger for the elec­tions.Shar­ma added: "Since no arrange­ments were an­nounced, there is no va­can­cy. There­fore it does not make sense to an­nounce cur­rent­ly, be­cause it may be seen by some quar­ters as pow­er-grab­bing."

Shar­ma said he was al­ready be­ing ac­cused by some PN­Mites of "try­ing to split" the PNM, fol­low­ing state­ments about the group's in­tend­ed lead­er­ship chal­lenger."That in­di­cates how re­moved some are from PNM's re­al sit­u­a­tion," he said.He added: "No one wants to split the par­ty. In fact, many want to broad­en it and make it more open. A healthy, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship con­test is a way to­wards that.

"To at­tract the 20 per cent float­ing vote for the gen­er­al elec­tion, PNM must be open, trans­par­ent and ac­com­mo­date a wide range of views com­fort­ably. If it re­mains in an old form that mit­i­gates against this, which op­po­si­tion to a healthy lead­er­ship con­test will en­sure, it can't progress."

At last Sat­ur­day's gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing, ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en peo­ple al­so voiced con­cerns about the ap­pear­ance at a cur­ry-duck lime, where Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of­fi­cials were present, of PNM la­dy vice-chair­man Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who is tipped as a pos­si­ble lead­er­ship chal­lenger, PNM of­fi­cials said.

Af­ter the con­cerns were aired, they said Beck­les-Robin­son de­liv­ered a strong re­but­tal, say­ing oth­er PNM of­fi­cials had at­tend­ed func­tions held by past or present UNC of­fi­cials and vice ver­sa, adding she had not ap­peared on any­one's plat­form and the lime was not a po­lit­i­cal event.Beck­les-Robin­son al­so ques­tioned the neg­a­tive fo­cus on her, say­ing she felt it had re­sult­ed from her re­cent state­ment that she might con­sid­er con­test­ing the lead­er­ship if there was a va­can­cy and if there was sup­port for her, they added.

Of­fi­cials said Row­ley did not com­ment, save to say time was too short elec­toral­ly to be con­cerned with triv­i­al­i­ties, nor did he ad­dress con­cerns about ap­point­ing de­feat­ed by-elec­tion can­di­date Avinash Singh to the Sen­ate.


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