Al­though Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Po­lit­i­cal Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has named her three deputy lead­ers to help steer the par­ty back in­to gov­ern­ment, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves on­ly a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure by the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion could al­low that.

“They must fall on them­selves, trip over them­selves con­sis­tent­ly, do the fool­ish­ness that would give the PNM very strong points for the PNM to re­turn as a re­al­ly strong vi­able force,” Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He ac­knowl­edged that it is still ear­ly in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) tenure but warned that the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion could mir­ror the 2021 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly polls, which dealt the PNM a heavy loss.

Mo­hammed said Beck­les’ lead­er­ship team faces a dif­fi­cult task in re­build­ing from the con­se­quences of poor de­ci­sions and at­ti­tudes that led to the par­ty’s elec­toral de­feat. He al­so ex­pressed reser­va­tions about her choic­es of for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, for­mer labour min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, and for­mer Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la can­di­date San­jiv Bood­hu.

Analysing each deputy, Mo­hammed said, whether peo­ple liked it or not, Im­bert was nec­es­sary be­cause of his 33 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in both gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion. That tenure, he said, gave Im­bert valu­able in­sti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge.

“De­spite his ar­ro­gance and ag­gres­sion, he is one of the few re­main­ing politi­cians who has an old-school po­lit­i­cal ap­proach,” Mo­hammed said. “I see Mr Im­bert as a ne­ces­si­ty for the in­sti­tu­tion, not a part of the par­ty, and al­so un­der­stand­ing the leg­isla­tive per­spec­tive.”

He ex­pect­ed Im­bert, as a se­nior fig­ure, to men­tor younger mem­bers, in­clud­ing re­cent­ly elect­ed chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing his first term in Op­po­si­tion.

On Bap­tiste-Primus, Mo­hammed said she ap­peared cho­sen to ad­dress in­ter­nal par­ty mat­ters—some­one ca­pa­ble of bridg­ing the gen­er­a­tional di­vide and steer­ing the par­ty’s di­rec­tion. How­ev­er, he ar­gued she did not need to be a deputy leader to per­form these tasks. He sug­gest­ed her prin­ci­pled stance dur­ing the se­lec­tion process in­volv­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young may have in­flu­enced her ap­point­ment.

Re­gard­ing Bood­hu, Mo­hammed said his se­lec­tion re­flect­ed the PNM’s con­tin­ued push for di­ver­si­ty. He re­called Bood­hu’s vo­cal pres­ence dur­ing his cam­paign to win the Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la seat from the UNC, de­scrib­ing him as a bright, young lawyer. Still, he would have pre­ferred for­mer PRO Lau­rel Leza­ma.

“Lau­rel is as­tute. She has deco­rum. She is one of the nicest peo­ple you can ever meet. She has done her dues for the par­ty. I mean, she has been through a lot in terms of step­ping away and com­ing back, but stay­ing true to the cause,” he said. “My choice for one of the deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers would have been Lau­rel Leza­ma, and I prob­a­bly would have moved Mrs Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus to a spe­cialised role as an ad­vis­er on pol­i­cy.”

Leza­ma was named In­ter­na­tion­al Li­ai­son Of­fi­cer.

Com­ment­ing on her new role, Bap­tiste-Primus said the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion out­lines the deputy leader’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port the po­lit­i­cal leader, and she in­tend­ed to do just that. She al­so not­ed that with on­ly 13 MPs rep­re­sent­ing 41 con­stituen­cies, she planned to vis­it each one to as­sess struc­tures and par­ty groups, en­sur­ing they were strong and func­tion­al.

She re­called join­ing the PNM in June 2010, just one month af­ter its elec­tion loss, to help re­brand and re­build the par­ty.

“Peo­ple do not nor­mal­ly join a po­lit­i­cal par­ty when they lose an elec­tion, so I joined the PNM to work with Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley to re­brand and re­build the PNM, and I did my con­tri­bu­tion in that re­gard. So that ground is not un­fa­mil­iar ground, and I am un­afraid of hard work,” she said.

She al­so cit­ed her 12-year pres­i­den­cy of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, dur­ing which she moved the union’s fi­nan­cial sta­tus from debt in 1997 to a $10 mil­lion bank bal­ance by 2009.

Bap­tiste-Primus ac­knowl­edged that around 102,000 sup­port­ers did not vote for the PNM in the last elec­tion, but found so­lace in the fact that they did not vote for the UNC ei­ther.

“A lot of wrong de­ci­sions were made, and we are pay­ing for it by be­ing in Op­po­si­tion. But I as­sure you, un­der the lead­er­ship of Pen­ne­lope Althea Beck­les-Robin­son, we are go­ing to re­build the par­ty. We are go­ing to woo and win back the trust and con­fi­dence of those 102,000 mem­bers and sup­port­ers in or­der to po­si­tion our­selves to re­turn to gov­ern­ment.”

As the DPL re­spon­si­ble for par­ty and elec­tion mat­ters, she said she would en­sure the par­ty re­spects and em­braces its mem­bers, ac­knowl­edg­ing that past ma­nip­u­la­tion of the par­ty’s con­sti­tu­tion con­tributed to its loss of favour. She said the new team is ready to ad­mit past mis­takes, of­fer apolo­gies, and demon­strate a will­ing­ness to do bet­ter.

Yes­ter­day, the PNM’s Na­tion­al Women’s League and the par­ty’s Youth League both con­grat­u­lat­ed the three new deputy lead­ers. The groups al­so wel­comed Leza­ma in her new role.