RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les says there is no in­fight­ing in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), but has not­ed that ex­ist­ing con­flict stems from those who felt hurt that the par­ty lost the re­cent Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing to re­porters af­ter at­tend­ing La Div­ina Pas­to­ra ac­tiv­i­ties in Siparia yes­ter­day, Beck­les ad­dressed sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing the se­lec­tion of sen­a­tors and the fu­ture of the par­ty.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about pos­si­ble in­ter­nal par­ty con­flict in the wake of the elec­tion de­feat, Beck­les said, “I’m not aware of any in­fight­ing. The truth is, we have lost. This is not the first time the par­ty has lost the elec­tion. We un­der­stand that when you lose an elec­tion, there are go­ing to be chal­lenges. You know, there will be con­cerns. You may have a bit of con­flict as well. But we have al­ways been a re­silient par­ty.”

Last week, a group call­ing it­self the Change­mak­ers called on gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings to fol­low the oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers who re­signed in the wake of the elec­tion de­feat.

In re­sponse, how­ev­er, Cum­mings claimed he dis­agreed with the elec­tion cam­paign strat­e­gy and was not kept in the loop, say­ing he felt side­lined dur­ing key de­ci­sions. Cum­mings not­ed that he is will­ing to work with the par­ty to ad­dress its short­com­ings but be­lieves in­ter­nal is­sues must be han­dled with trans­paren­cy and re­spect.

Ad­dress­ing this, Beck­les said, “There’s been a lot of in­ter­views, there’s a lot of com­ments. Some peo­ple are clear­ly not hap­py that we have lost, and peo­ple are push­ing the blame on­to al­most any­body that they think would have been re­spon­si­ble for that.”

She said her work to re­build the par­ty had al­ready start­ed.

“When you lose, peo­ple point fin­gers; that’s ex­pect­ed. But the im­por­tance is, my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a leader of the op­po­si­tion is to en­sure that we have a team, we do our analy­sis or post-mortem in terms of why we have lost, and use da­ta and feed­back from the var­i­ous par­ty groups, from all the con­stituents to in­flu­ence your way for­ward,” she said.

She said she was al­so tak­ing her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as Op­po­si­tion Leader se­ri­ous­ly.

“I have a great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. I have a com­mit­ment to the par­ty and the recog­ni­tion that when you lose an elec­tion, you are go­ing to have un­hap­py peo­ple.”

She added, “Mem­bers of the par­ty felt that we had lost our way in terms of deal­ing with the ground, deal­ing with the mem­bers of the par­ty, and deal­ing with the coun­try. So my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to as­sist where that is con­cerned. Most im­por­tant thing, do your home­work, do your post-mortem, meet with the con­stituen­cies, and have a strat­e­gy to move for­ward and to be ready to be back in­to gov­ern­ment.”

Asked about calls for racial eq­ui­ty in the Sen­ate and con­cerns that there were no In­do-Trinida­di­an MPs in the Up­per House, Beck­les said, “The truth is we had 41 per­sons that of­fered them­selves. That 41 per­sons was a re­flec­tion of race, re­li­gion, class, every­thing you can think about. As I de­cide who I will pick, I will take all what I think my par­ty and my coun­try wants me to con­sid­er to make sure that that bal­ance ex­ists.”

She added: “I am go­ing to be there not for ob­struc­tion, but for col­lab­o­ra­tion and to en­sure that as I make my de­ci­sions and con­sul­ta­tions, I do it in the best in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”