There ap­pears to be an im­pend­ing show­down be­tween the La Brea and To­co/San­gre Grande con­stituen­cies of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the par­ty’s na­tion­al screen­ing com­mit­tee led by its po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

The show­down is over the screen­ing com­mit­tee’s re­fusal to ac­cept Robert Le Hunte and Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, the ap­par­ent over­whelm­ing choic­es of their con­stituen­cies for the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

The screen­ing com­mit­tee has told the La Brea con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive to go back and find a new can­di­date and gave them un­til Mon­day to do so but up to last night, the La Brea ex­ec­u­tive re­mained res­olute that they are go­ing to nom­i­nate Le Hunte again and are re­fus­ing to find an­oth­er can­di­date.

How­ev­er, the screen­ing com­mit­tee has cho­sen for­mer West In­dies crick­eter and now coach Mervyn Dil­lon ahead of Jen­nings-Smith.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the La Brea ex­ec­u­tive met and vot­ed in favour of re­turn­ing to the screen­ing com­mit­tee with Le Hunte, say­ing the for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter had helped the con­stituen­cy when he was min­is­ter and had worked for a long time in the PNM.

“Le Hunte’s dis­agree­ment is with Dr Row­ley not the PNM. Why must we go and find a new can­di­date sim­ply be­cause he has a falling out with the po­lit­i­cal leader? We are not Moru­ga and will not have a friend of the po­lit­i­cal leader foist­ed up­on us,” a mem­ber of the La Brea ex­ec­u­tive told Guardian Me­dia on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

The ex­ec­u­tive not­ed that while Row­ley told a me­dia con­fer­ence on Thurs­day that the PNM had a process for the se­lec­tion of a can­di­date which starts with nom­i­na­tion from par­ty groups and then the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives, he has been breach­ing those very rules.

Cas­es in point, they say, are the se­lec­tion of Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters in Moru­ga, Clarence Ram­barath in Ch­agua­nas East, Michael Seales in Tabaquite and now ask­ing the con­stituen­cy to find some­one who is not go­ing to emerge from the par­ty process.

“Dr Row­ley on­ly seems to know the process when it is con­ve­nient. La Brea wants some­one who will fight for the con­stituen­cy and that per­son is Le Hunte,” a con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive said.

When the votes were orig­i­nal­ly tak­en, Le Hunte had the sup­port of 20 of the 22 mem­bers of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and two were for in­cum­bent Nicole Olivierre. This fol­lowed a 16 to 3 mar­gin for Le Hunte when the par­ty groups vot­ed.

Olivierre, who has been the MP in the area for the last five years, has not been pop­u­lar among PNM sup­port­ers and it was sur­pris­ing she of­fered her­self up for re-elec­tion.

Sev­er­al Cab­i­net sources told GML that Row­ley was adamant on Thurs­day that he did not want to hear any­thing about Le Hunte in­sist­ing the in­ci­dent that led to Le Hunte’s res­ig­na­tion is not an iso­lat­ed one.

Le Hunte quit the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter a heat­ed re­cent Cab­i­net meet­ing, in which re­ports are he went toe to toe with Row­ley over a Cab­i­net note. He al­so al­leged­ly fell out with em­bat­tled Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Le Hunte was brought in­to the Cab­i­net by Row­ley and was wide­ly seen by the pri­vate sec­tor as a min­is­ter who could be ap­proached to deal with the chal­lenges they faced. He re­mains the par­ty’s vice- chair­man and up­on his res­ig­na­tion in­sist­ed that he re­mained loy­al to the PNM.

Since Le Hunte’s res­ig­na­tion, Row­ley has been silent on the is­sue.

Un­der the PNM con­sti­tu­tion, the po­lit­i­cal leader no longer has the pow­er to ve­to the rec­om­men­da­tions of the screen­ing com­mit­tee. Row­ley was him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this change when the late Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had to abide by the ma­jor­i­ty of the par­ty’s na­tion­al screen­ing com­mit­tee in the run-up to the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion. At that time, Man­ning had ob­ject­ed to Row­ley con­test­ing the Diego Mar­tin West seat for the PNM and his ex­ec­u­tive stood with him.