DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

While the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) marks its first an­niver­sary of re­turn­ing to pow­er, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is fac­ing a pe­ri­od of in­tro­spec­tion fol­low­ing its 26-13 de­feat in the April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion. Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, as­sess­ing the one-year mile­stone, sug­gests the re­sult was less an over­whelm­ing man­date and more a re­flec­tion of sys­temic vot­er ap­a­thy.

Cit­ing the more than 100,000 cit­i­zens who ab­stained from vot­ing, Al-Rawi ar­gued that the out­come was a di­rect con­se­quence of a dis­con­nect be­tween the par­ty and the pub­lic.

“I wasn’t very sur­prised by the elec­tion re­sult in last year’s turn of the polls. It def­i­nite­ly was ei­ther go­ing to be very nar­row or this re­sult that we had. I thought that the PNM had a lot of work to do in terms of en­gag­ing the pub­lic. I def­i­nite­ly think that is some­thing that re­flect­ed in the poll. And Trinidad and To­ba­go has the clear knowl­edge now that democ­ra­cy has con­se­quences, right?” Al-Rawi stat­ed.

When pressed on where the ac­count­abil­i­ty lies for the par­ty’s loss, Al-Rawi re­ject­ed the no­tion of in­di­vid­ual fail­ure, point­ing in­stead to: “The PNM. This is a col­lec­tive en­ter­prise.”

He ex­pand­ed on the prin­ci­ple of col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­in the par­ty struc­ture.

“If you don’t agree with the col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the rules are leave and speak out. For those of us who stayed, there were rea­sons; de­spite our dis­agree­ments as to pol­i­cy and pre­scrip­tion, we stayed. There­fore, the blame is a col­lec­tive blame.”

The par­ty’s for­mal ret­ro­spec­tive is ex­pect­ed to­day, when Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is sched­uled to ad­dress the na­tion.

How­ev­er, the in­ter­nal fo­cus on the fu­ture re­mains cloud­ed by the con­tro­ver­sy with­in the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC).

PNM Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates was re­moved from the PAAC af­ter al­le­ga­tions of edit­ing a doc­u­ment in­tend­ed for a state­ment by for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh dur­ing an in­quiry in­to the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

Al-Rawi was al­so ac­cused of edit­ing the doc­u­ment.

But, cit­ing his pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions as an at­tor­ney, he de­clined to pro­vide an up­date or com­ment on the mat­ter.

“My po­si­tion in re­la­tion to this mat­ter is that the Le­gal Pro­fes­sion Act is very clear. When you act as some­one’s at­tor­ney at law (Deyals­ingh’s), you’re bound by le­gal pro­fes­sion­al priv­i­lege. So, as much as I would like to par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sion, I have a client, and I can­not speak to those things,” he not­ed.

Al-Rawi al­so re­fused to state whether he would view a po­ten­tial re­vo­ca­tion of his sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ment by Beck­les as a per­son­al set­back.