Gail Alexan­der

The Di­vali out­fits in the Par­lia­ment up to yes­ter­day didn't quite take the spot­light off a new po­lit­i­cal fash­ion state­ment made by the Op­po­si­tion PNM dur­ing the 2012 bud­get de­bate. PNM Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyal-singh sport­ed a black and gold kur­ta dur­ing Thurs­day's Sen­ate de­bate. But on pre­vi­ous days, Deyal-singh had joined his three col­leagues in drop­ping the bal­isi­er tie and break­ing out new mul­ti­coloured "na­tion­al" ties fol­low­ing their leader Kei­th Row­ley's re­cent ac­tion in this re­gard. And iron­i­cal­ly enough, a "split" in the PNM has not come be­cause of the di­vid­ed Op­po­si­tion seats at the new Par­lia­ment cham­ber (or be­cause of Ude­cott).

In­stead, the is­sue of the 55-year-old tra­di­tion of the bal­isi­er tie has ig­nit­ed hot de­bate in the par­ty since some PNM MPs want to con­tin­ue wear­ing it, while Row­ley and his Up­per House team clear­ly do not. De­spite Gov­ern­ment MPs amus­ing them­selves with the de­vel­op­ment dur­ing the bud­get de­bate, the wardrobe ad­just­ment has been sig­nif­i­cant enough for par­ty de­bate to over­flow from the clos­et­ed PNM's In­ter­net com­mu­ni­ty. In­deed, PNM PRO, Sen­a­tor Faris Al Rawi, felt con­strained to com­ment on the tie dur­ing yes­ter­day's bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, spin­ning the "na­tion­al tie" as the "new bal­isi­er tie."

When Row­ley raised dis­cus­sions last year on cur­tail­ing use of the tie and ex­tend­ing it to the wider par­ty mem­bers, it aroused heat­ed de­bate and was left un­con­clud­ed. PNM chair­man Franklin Khan yes­ter­day con­firmed the lat­est de­vel­op­ment has reignit­ed de­bate, but said no dis­cus­sion at any lev­el was held to ce­ment any po­si­tion on it. With PNM's moves to re­brand away from the neg­a­tive im­age of the past, Row­ley has uni­lat­er­al­ly launched a new chap­ter in PNM his­to­ry, drop­ping the tie as the Op­po­si­tion be­gan work­ing in the Wa­ter­front Par­lia­ment's new sur­round­ings.

But since oth­er male MPs in the Low­er House con­tin­ued wear­ing their bal­isi­er ties af­ter he doffed his, the split in opin­ion on the is­sue was as ap­par­ent as the gap in the Op­po­si­tion row at the new Par­lia­ment cham­ber. The PNM front bench is now di­vid­ed in­to two flanks of six each since there is an aisle be­tween the sixth and sev­enth seats. Each row fea­tures the present and past par­ty lead­ers. The first six PNM MPs com­prise Row­ley, Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald, Don­na Ox, Nile­ung Hy­po­lite, Pat McIn­tosh and Colm Im­bert.

The oth­er six are MPs Fitzger­ald Jef­frey, Amery Browne, Ali­cia Hospedales, Joanne Thomas, Paula Gopee-Scoon, Patrick Man­ning. Af­ter Gov­ern­ment quips about who was fol­low­ing which leader on the PNM side re­gard­ing the tie, PNM sen­a­tors how­ev­er sig­nalled they were the ones fol­low­ing the leader up to yes­ter­day. Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh-saved from the tie furore with his kur­ta on Thurs­day-said it was a group de­ci­sion to change based on their val­ues and to be more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the par­ty.Ac­knowl­edg­ing it was an emo­tion­al and his­tor­i­cal is­sue, Deyal-singh said mem­bers need to be more rel­e­vant.

'No con­sul­ta­tion by leader, sen­a­tors'

While PNM sen­a­tors who were se­lect­ed and ap­point­ed by Row­ley have toed his line, PNM's Louis Lee Sing said yes­ter­day: "The mat­ter should be dis­cussed and I haven't heard it dis­cussed. Some may be­lieve peo­ple can do as they well please. But giv­en the tra­di­tion, I'd have hoped there would have been more dis­cus­sion and agree­ment. "I hope this ap­proach is not an in­di­ca­tion of how we're pro­ceed­ing with busi­ness as it would ap­pear we're mov­ing from one lev­el of au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism to an­oth­er in T&T. "Emo­tion­al mat­ters like these re­quire adult pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach­es. You can't ar­bi­trar­i­ly get up one day and de­cide as a leader or MP you're not wear­ing the tie."

Lee Sing adding there should have been con­cur­rence at se­nior lev­els be­fore sen­a­tors shelved it. Ex-PNM youth of­fi­cer Dane Wil­son said he was dis­ap­point­ed in Row­ley for fail­ing to keep a promise to dis­cuss the is­sue. Wil­son said Row­ley need­ed to apol­o­gise to the par­ty for "dis­re­spect­ing" the in­sti­tu­tion of the tie. "Young and old mem­bers are up­set about this," Wil­son added. "The shift from the tie makes PN­Mites ap­pear to have caved in­to Gov­ern­ment's prods to drop it. We may have giv­en in to an in­di­rect way of de­stroy­ing PNM as it's been our sym­bol for 55 years." Wil­son said he was dis­ap­point­ed in Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds for aban­don­ing the tie since Hinds was de­vout­ly PNM.

Wil­son added, "We haven't heard from PRO Al Rawi in the state of emer­gency. He hasn't at­tend­ed four coun­cil meet­ings yet he shows up in the Sen­ate mi­nus the bal­isi­er tie. The PNM can­not tell Gov­ern­ment to con­sult with the pub­lic when we don't con­sult on our own mat­ters." Wil­son said, "These are times for con­cern when se­nior of­fi­cials pre­fer their own let­ter­head or oth­er­wise to PNM's in­signia. If peo­ple are ashamed of the bal­isi­er, they shouldn't let the door hit them on their way out of Bal­isi­er House." PNM deputy leader Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald de­clined com­ment. La­dy vice chair­man Don­na Ox, ac­knowl­edg­ing wide par­ty de­bate, said: "I'd go with the ma­jor­i­ty on the tie is­sue. I un­der­stand how peo­ple feel, but I don't want to waste en­er­gy bick­er­ing on this when we have too many se­ri­ous na­tion­al is­sues at hand." MP Paula Gopee-Scoon said, "I'm one for toe­ing the par­ty line but I'd like dis­cus­sions on the is­sue to be com­plet­ed."

Male MPs want the tie

While Man­ning is silent, his con­tin­ued wear­ing of the bal­isi­er tie af­ter Row­ley aban­doned it has been elo­quent. The Re­nais­sance group which sup­port­ed his May North-South walk is al­so stren­u­ous­ly against aban­don­ing the tie. MP Colm Im­bert said, "I don't want to get in any kankatang, but I'll be wear­ing my bal­isi­er tie to Par­lia­ment. It iden­ti­fies me as an MP. I've worn it for 20 years. I in­tend to con­tin­ue wear­ing it to sig­ni­fy I'm an elect­ed MP. "Every group has its colour, sym­bols, em­blems-it's sym­bol­ic. With­out it, PNM would lose part of our iden­ti­ty. But it's a per­son­al mat­ter. If peo­ple want to wear it, it's up to them-but I'll be wear­ing my tie."

MP Nile­ung Hy­po­lite said while there was noth­ing wrong in chang­ing the tie, it was a tra­di­tion. Since it was PNM's sym­bol on the EBC reg­is­ter, to aban­don it may ap­pear to in­di­cate PNM was shift­ing its fun­da­men­tals. He added, "UNC MPs wear their yel­low shirts and ties and don't field all seats. But PNM is the on­ly par­ty that's al­ways con­sis­tent­ly pro­duced can­di­dates for all seats in every elec­tion so we're tru­ly a na­tion­al par­ty." Hy­po­lite, who in­tends wear­ing the tie, said it was a Gen­er­al Coun­cil dis­cus­sion is­sue. MP Fitzger­ald Jef­frey added, "The tie is part of PNM's iden­ti­ty. It's in synch with PNM's na­tion­al­ist poli­cies. I pre­fer to keep it. To wear it doesn't mean we're less pa­tri­ot­ic.

"In the big de­bate on it, some say it's not nec­es­sary. But those who say that are in the mi­nor­i­ty. The peo­ple who have prob­lems with us wear­ing it are main­ly the Gov­ern­ment." Jef­frey added, "If Dr Row­ley doesn't want to wear it... well, one of the beau­ties of PNM is free­dom of choice. But NAR's Ger­ry Yet­ming wore his shift jac, Lin­coln Dou­glas wears African garb." Jef­frey added, "More peo­ple in PNM should be al­lowed to wear it apart from MPs and coun­cil­lors. It's a sign of PNM's strength and sol­i­dar­i­ty. The PP has four par­ties and four sym­bols-look at the dif­fer­ent views from them. We in PNM have one en­dur­ing sym­bol: that's the bal­isi­er." MP Amery Browne added, "Clear­ly there are mixed views, it's one of con­tro­ver­sy in PNM. On such mat­ters the fi­nal de­ci­sion is im­por­tant, but al­so im­por­tant is how we ar­rive at that fi­nal de­ci­sion giv­en this long es­tab­lished tra­di­tion.

"Wear­ing the tie isn't about per­son­al views, it's about par­ty tra­di­tion. It should be thor­ough­ly dis­cussed next coun­cil." PNM chair­man Khan said: "The tie has been tra­di­tion, but not a con­sti­tu­tion­al re­quire­ment. There are pros and cons. Some may feel it out­lived its time or should not be used in Par­lia­ment where you rep­re­sent the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Or that the par­ty sym­bol may mit­i­gate against this." "It's large­ly an emo­tion­al is­sue. If the time has come to put clo­sure to the mat­ter, it will be dis­cussed at coun­cil if it aris­es." Khan said the is­sue may have to be left as a choice. "I don't think the coun­cil would rule any oth­er way to make some­thing legal­ly bind­ing," he said.