Gail Alexan­der

It might need months or years to re­build a PNM so that large num­bers of the pop­u­la­tion will have the con­fi­dence in it to gov­ern T&T, PNM Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Amery Browne said yes­ter­day. Browne said he would not give trac­tion to the per­cep­tion that his ab­sence caused PNM to lose Diego cor­po­ra­tions since every­one knew where he was and why he was there–in Eu­rope for a med­ical con­ven­tion.

Af­ter every elec­tion, he said peo­ple look around for scape­goats. But he felt the PP's win was the re­sult of shrewd po­lit­i­cal think­ing and was an "echo of PP's May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry." He said it was too ear­ly to come to any crit­i­cal judg­ment in just a cou­ple weeks re­gard­ing PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley's abil­i­ty to lead the par­ty. Browne said the process "is go­ing to re­quire pa­tience and on­go­ing ef­forts at team build­ing and re-es­tab­lish­ment of com­mon prin­ci­ples of uni­ty and work­ing to­geth­er."

He felt PNM's youths would car­ry with them a large part of the an­swer for the par­ty's chal­lenge and large num­bers re­main com­mit­ted. He said he was con­fi­dent "it will be a dif­fer­ent sto­ry next time and PNM would form the next gov­ern­ment." (GA)