Gail Alexan­der

Mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment must teach Karen Nunez-Tesheira a les­son she will nev­er for­get, says Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus.

"You can­not ... we must not al­low her to sit on the river­bank and bad talk the riv­er and then come and ask you for your vote!" de­clared Bap­tiste-Primus while speak­ing at Wednes­day night's Lead­ers in Ser­vice cam­paign meet­ing in Tacarigua.

Ear­li­er that day, the court had dis­missed Nunez- Tesheira's le­gal ac­tion seek­ing to de­lay the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tion.

Nunez-Tesheira is chal­leng­ing PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for the lead­er­ship.

De­spite the loss in the court, Nunez-Tesheira said she is fight­ing on and is con­sid­er­ing an ap­peal.

Ad­dress­ing LIS sup­port­ers on the mat­ter, Bap­tiste-Primus said there were those who tried to stop the elec­tion and she won­dered why.

"We must thank the learned judge who did the right thing throw­ing Karen and that le­gal ac­tion way be­yond...what was the pur­pose of such le­gal ac­tion?"

She added, "I haven't read the judge­ment in its en­tire­ty, but I know the judge didn't agree with her. You came in and knew there were three days of vot­ing, you al­lowed your­self to be nom­i­nat­ed, you took no ac­tion. But last week you took ac­tion to stop the elec­tion...!"

Bap­tiste-Primus claimed Nunez-Tesheira had been in­vit­ed to "come on board" in the PNM, but re­fused.

"You come in the dance, come down in the gayelle. If you come in the gayelle, you must be able to take bois. But they want things easy, ready-made. They don't want to work hard, they want to ride on the backs of those labour­ing in the vine­yard," she said.

"I've had my ex­pe­ri­ences with Karen Tesheira eh - she's not an easy in­di­vid­ual and I can say it bold and brave tonight, as she'll know what I'm re­fer­ring to. She's al­so not a very forth­right and hon­est per­son, " she al­leged.

Bap­tiste-Primus said she had an ex­pe­ri­ence with Nunez-Tesheira when the lat­ter was Fi­nance Min­is­ter and Bap­tiste-Primus, a for­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, led ne­go­ti­a­tions with her.

She claimed Nunez-Tesheira had agreed that in es­tab­lish­ing the TTRA, pub­lic of­fi­cers would have the right to trans­fer to the TTRA. But she claimed at an­oth­er meet­ing, Nunez-Tesheira "...looked me in the eye and told me she nev­er agreed to pub­lic of­fi­cers trans­fer­ring to the TTRA."

"You know every­thing turn ole mas one time! I said a few choice words to her, every­thing mash-up. Gov­ern­ment couldn't go any fur­ther. I went out there and told my mem­bers we not co-op­er­at­ing, we not work­ing."

Bap­tiste-Primus al­so claimed when she joined PNM in 2010, she was as­signed as co-or­di­na­tor for D'Abadie - O'Meara. which Nunez- Tesheira rep­re­sent­ed.

"I could tell you she left a bro­ken con­stituen­cy with ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers who had se­ri­ous trust is­sues.

So, when Karen Tesheira want to walk in the dance, then want to say she want to change the rules of the dance when you haven't con­tributed..."