Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) deputy leader Colm Im­bert has ad­mit­ted that the par­ty’s de­feat in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion stemmed from what he blunt­ly called “too many stu­pid mis­takes.”

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin on Wednes­day, Im­bert of­fered a can­did as­sess­ment of the par­ty’s per­for­mance, say­ing the PNM failed to main­tain a strong con­nec­tion with its core sup­port­ers and of­ten ig­nored the im­por­tance of con­sen­sus in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“We don’t lis­ten,” he said.

“It’s like stick break in our ears. I not shame to say that.”

Im­bert stressed that the par­ty could not af­ford to re­peat the same er­rors if it hoped to re­gain vot­ers’ con­fi­dence.

“Go­ing for­ward, Ms (Pen­ne­lope) Beck­les, your chal­lenge is com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tiv­i­ty with the peo­ple of T&T. Once you lis­ten to them and un­der­stand, you bound to win.”

He urged par­ty mem­bers to re­flect hon­est­ly on what went wrong, em­pha­sis­ing that in­tro­spec­tion and re­form were crit­i­cal to re­build­ing trust.

Draw­ing lessons from a re­cent book by for­mer US pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ka­mala Har­ris, Im­bert com­pared the PNM’s fail­ures to lead­er­ship is­sues she de­scribed.

“Lis­ten to what she’s say­ing. It’s as though we had all been hyp­no­tised. The stakes were too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to in­di­vid­ual ego or am­bi­tion. When polls in­di­cat­ed that I was get­ting more pop­u­lar, the peo­ple around him didn’t like it. They didn’t grasp that if I did well, they did well. They just didn’t get it,” he read to the crowd.

Im­bert linked this to the PNM’s own prob­lems dur­ing the last elec­tion, cit­ing an “ab­sence of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic de­ci­sion-mak­ing” as a key fac­tor.

He al­so ref­er­enced the suc­ces­sion of Stu­art Young, who was se­lect­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to take over lead­er­ship of the par­ty fol­low­ing a par­lia­men­tary cau­cus vote. Con­cerns had been raised with­in the par­ty over whether due process was fol­lowed but Young re­mained.

“One of our most se­ri­ous short­com­ings is dis­con­nec­tion with the grass­roots,” Im­bert said.

“Our lead­er­ship needs to be more in tune with the con­cerns of or­di­nary cit­i­zens.”