Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In what can on­ly be de­scribed as a 360-de­gree turn­around, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, dur­ing a spe­cial­ly-con­vened meet­ing at his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice last week, has tak­en the lead and rec­om­mend­ed via a let­ter, that Kei­th Row­ley was the "most suit­able" par­ty mem­ber to as­sume the man­tle of po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. A de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed on June 27, dur­ing the par­ty's spe­cial con­ven­tion in Ch­aguara­mas. Top par­ty sources told the Sun­day Guardian that Man­ning, to­geth­er with 156 mem­bers, unan­i­mous­ly agreed that Row­ley should take the par­ty for­ward.

Sources said the de­ci­sion was tak­en by mem­bers of the 50 par­ty groups in Man­ning's con­stituen­cy, which al­so com­pris­es the Women and Youth Leagues. "The for­mer prime min­is­ter feels it is the best cause of ac­tion at this point in time. He sup­ports Dr Row­ley as the new po­lit­i­cal leader, and we have all pledged to do the same."

"We are pre­pared to work with him to bring the par­ty back from its knees. On June 27, there will be one po­lit­i­cal leader and it will be Dr Row­ley," the source said. Iron­i­cal­ly, though, mem­bers who have treat­ed Row­ley as an "out­cast" will be meet­ing at the same venue where he chal­lenged Man­ning for lead­er­ship of the par­ty in 1995. While Row­ley has gath­ered re­sound­ing sup­port from troops in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try, his col­league, Diego Mar­tin East MP Colm Im­bert, is al­so con­tem­plat­ing fight­ing for lead­er­ship. So, will the PNM close ranks to over­come the dev­as­tat­ing May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion de­feat, or will there be an on­go­ing pow­er strug­gle? All eyes will be on Ch­aguara­mas on June 27.

Flash­back

Man­ning was de­feat­ed in his bat­tle to reign over the PNM in 1996. The shock­ing move caught many off guard, when Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley opt­ed to throw his hat in the ring for lead­er­ship of the PNM, fol­low­ing the par­ty's 17/17 dead­lock at the polls in 1995. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress went on to form the next gov­ern­ment when they joined forces with the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion, who cap­tured the two To­ba­go seats in the snap elec­tion. Many were left shocked, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who was of the view that his po­si­tion as po­lit­i­cal leader was se­cure and would not be op­posed.

It sig­nalled the be­gin­ning of a strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween Man­ning, and Row­ley, which over time fu­elled in­to a war of words. The on­go­ing war end­ed in Row­ley be­ing axed from the Cab­i­net by Man­ning, when he raised cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions against the for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott). Stead­fast in his de­ci­sion, Man­ning jus­ti­fied the move, de­scrib­ing Row­ley's be­hav­iour sim­i­lar to that of a "wa­jang."