Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Five months af­ter be­ing elect­ed PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil chair­man, Nicole Hen­ry-Wal­dron has quit the par­ty. The de­vel­op­ment comes as the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment seeks to re­build fol­low­ing its re­sound­ing 15-0 de­feat in the Jan­u­ary To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

Hen­ry-Wal­dron re­port­ed­ly sub­mit­ted her res­ig­na­tion let­ter on Thurs­day to the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the PNM thanked Hen­ry-Wal­dron for her ser­vice and wished her well in the fu­ture. The Coun­cil said vice-chair­man and ex-Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil­lor Petal Daniel-Benoit will as­sume the du­ties of chair­man.

It said the par­ty re­mains stead­fast in ful­fill­ing its du­ty to its mem­bers, sup­port­ers and To­bag­o­ni­ans.

“Our work con­tin­ues, and our fo­cus re­mains on strength­en­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion, serv­ing the peo­ple and ad­vanc­ing the in­ter­ests of To­ba­go,” it said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the chair­man’s ex­it was caused by ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences in the di­rec­tion of the par­ty. Ef­forts to con­tact PNM To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to pub­li­ca­tion.

But po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he is not sur­prised by the de­vel­op­ment. He said the par­ty — both in Trinidad and To­ba­go — seems to be floun­der­ing while out of of­fice.

He added that the PNM has not been cre­ative enough to cre­ate a “shad­ow op­po­si­tion” to ad­dress is­sues and re­main vis­i­ble. He not­ed that this was cru­cial since the par­ty lost its soli­tary seat in the THA.

Mo­hammed al­so queried whether Cud­joe-Lewis is mak­ing any sig­nif­i­cant strides on her elec­tion promise to unite the mem­ber­ship. The for­mer sports min­is­ter de­feat­ed ex-mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris in the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions in April.

“I would have thought that be­cause To­ba­go is a small­er space, be­cause Sham­fa is aware of the needs and for ten years she was res­i­dent MP for To­ba­go West, that some­how she would have been able to pull it to­geth­er with all the stake­hold­ers. There are many peo­ple in the To­ba­go space who be­long to the PNM and have tal­ent and abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty, and I don’t know if she’s honed in on it.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Hen­ry-Wal­dron and PNM leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful up to yes­ter­day evening.