Gail Alexan­der

“Rock so!”

That’s the mes­sage de­liv­ered on Sun­day night by En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, to those who were not there for the PNM in its Op­po­si­tion days and who now want to come and seek to be leader and get mem­bers’ votes.

Young shout­ed the com­mand in a re­ver­ber­at­ing voice at the Cou­va meet­ing of the Lead­ers in Ser­vice (LIS) team.

The group is con­test­ing the PNM’s No­vem­ber 26-27 and De­cem­ber 4 in­ter­nal elec­tion.

Young is seek­ing to be­come chair­man.

He and oth­er can­di­dates de­fend­ed in­cum­bent leader Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is LIS can­di­date for leader.

Row­ley is be­ing chal­lenged by for­mer min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira, Ronald Boynes and Ju­nior Bar­rack.

Row­ley cur­rent­ly has COVID- 19 and was ab­sent from the meet­ing while re­cov­er­ing.

Pri­or to the meet­ing, LIS team mem­bers dis­played a get-well prayer which stu­dents from the To­ba­go Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tists Pri­ma­ry School sent to Row­ley.

On PNM’s elec­tion race, Fos­ter Cum­mings said, “When they at­tack me, I say ‘come, come, deal with this Bap­tist!’ I’ll dance them un­der my foot Sun­day to Sun­day. Let dem come! You want bat­tle? We know how to bat­tle!”

Young said the par­ty was called up­on to make some very se­ri­ous de­ci­sions at its cur­rent im­por­tant point of change and tran­si­tion.

He warned against some like “ter­mites” emerg­ing from the wood­work and who “all of a sud­den want to lead PNM.”

He said, “Ac­tions aren’t words, talk is cheap. In 2010 when we were in Op­po­si­tion, those peo­ple com­ing for your vote now, did they step for­ward then? Did you see those faces around? … They served for a short time, they got a min­is­ter’s work and then walked away from the par­ty!”

Young said what irked him about those now pop­ping out of the wood­work was whether they were true PNM and loved the par­ty, not­ing they’re on the ra­dio, “go­ing ‘nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya’.”

He said, “And you want to be PNM’s leader? As Fos­ter say, ‘rock so!’” Young shout­ed, “You ever see them at Bal­isi­er House or any func­tion?

“All you false pre­tenders out there, you sud­den­ly feel you’re ready for lead­er­ship … All you could go on so­cial me­dia, I fed up get at­tack—bring it on be­cause you know what I can say with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, the hard work I per­son­al­ly did and we still fight­ing for more—so gimme a break.”

Young said if peo­ple had a de­posit to lose, they’d lose it.

He added that be­fore he was in Gov­ern­ment, even if he didn’t agree with every­thing, when the me­dia asked him for com­ment, he didn’t at­tack his par­ty in pub­lic.

“So rock so!”

Young re­count­ed the work of PN­Mites like him­self who were in Op­po­si­tion.

Young vowed, “I’ll go to war any day or night of the week for Dr Row­ley.”

Bap­tiste-Primus: They con­tributed na­da!

Labour re­la­tions can­di­date Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus said, “Let’s not be dis­tract­ed by those who didn’t con­tribute to the par­ty’s re­build­ing. As (La­dy Vice chair­man) Camille (Robin­son-Reg­is) cap­tured it when she said they ‘sat on the river­bank and did noth­ing but bad talked the riv­er at every turn’.

“Yet they now crawl­ing out of the wood­work of­fer­ing them­selves to you and want­i­ng to en­joy the ben­e­fits to which they con­tributed na­da! Pay them no mind! Tell them rock so, we go­ing with LIS!”

Bap­tiste-Primus said the cur­rent lead­er­ship can be de­scribed as “ster­ling.” She ad­vised mem­bers to mea­sure those of­fer­ing them­selves for leader against the yard­stick of qual­i­ty, adding the present leader would pre­vail.

She said this isn’t the time to con­sid­er chang­ing the leader who “worked tire­less­ly pos­i­tive­ly defin­ing lead­er­ship,” par­tic­u­lar­ly in the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly (vice chair­man can­di­date) urged mem­bers to take the elec­tion se­ri­ous­ly, since those elect­ed will be the ones to take PNM for­ward and ul­ti­mate­ly, T&T.

“This elec­tion is too im­por­tant to say ‘who win, win’ as the PNM’s lead­er­ship of­ten has great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for T&T,” she said.

Cum­mings warned the UNC that the PNM is com­ing for Ch­agua­nas East in the next Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Not­ing the num­ber of peo­ple at Sun­day night’s cam­paign meet­ing, Cum­mings said even in cen­tral Trinidad the par­ty was able to mar­shal the PNM forces.

“And I have one mes­sage for the UNC: we are com­ing for Ch­agua­nas East! Even if you think you com­ing with stove and fridge in Ch­agua­nas East, we are go­ing to win Ch­agua­nas East on the next oc­ca­sion.”