DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is push­ing back against crit­i­cism from with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), af­ter par­ty stal­warts urged her to ex­er­cise more de­ci­sive lead­er­ship of the 70-year-old or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Beck­les was re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia spe­cial re­port pub­lished on Sun­day, which ex­am­ined her lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the PNM’s sweep­ing de­feat in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion, where the par­ty lost all 15 seats to the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions due next year, for­mer San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts and for­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford both ques­tioned Beck­les’ de­ci­sive­ness.

Ford point­ed specif­i­cal­ly to her re­sponse af­ter Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj at­tend­ed a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress fundrais­ing Christ­mas din­ner on De­cem­ber 13, the same day the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion host­ed its own func­tion.

Beck­les, how­ev­er, al­so re­ceived back­ing from for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dan­ny Mon­tano, for­mer PNM vice-chair­man Robert Le Hunte and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, all of whom ar­gued that her lead­er­ship style dif­fers from past po­lit­i­cal lead­ers but re­mains ef­fec­tive.

Break­ing her si­lence, Beck­les not­ed that the re­port cit­ed on­ly two crit­ics with­in a par­ty of more than 100,000 mem­bers.

“I thank the stal­warts who have con­cerns about my de­ci­sive lead­er­ship with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to a mat­ter, and I want to give them the as­sur­ance that as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, I recog­nise our prac­tices, our con­ven­tions, our poli­cies. I have a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent style of lead­er­ship from my pre­de­ces­sors. But I as­sure you that when the need is to take de­ci­sive lead­er­ship, I do pre­cise­ly that.”

She con­firmed that she is re­view­ing Ma­haraj’s con­duct, in­clud­ing his ap­pear­ance at an In­di­an Re­pub­lic Day event, shown in a pho­to­graph post­ed on­line by Hous­ing Min­istry Min­is­ter Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der, which al­so fea­tured Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad.

“I don’t know if he’s cozy­ing up. I don’t know if I call that cozy­ing up,” she said, re­fer­ring to the im­age.

On the ear­li­er UNC fundrais­er pho­to, Beck­les said dis­cus­sions were on­go­ing.

“What I would say is that I have had some dis­cus­sions with the may­or on the mat­ter. We are due to meet again, and then I will give my pro­nounce­ment on it.”

She re­ject­ed claims that she was be­ing soft, stress­ing that par­ty lead­er­ship struc­tures were ac­tive­ly en­gaged.

“Yes, I am po­lit­i­cal leader, but there is a lead­er­ship, and al­so there is a pro­ce­dure as it re­lates to mat­ters sim­i­lar to that of Mr Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj. I give you the as­sur­ance that the lead­er­ship has dis­cussed it and... I have spo­ken to Mr Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj.”

Beck­les said the out­come of that process would be re­vealed in time.

“It is not every sin­gle thing as it re­lates to the par­ty that you’re go­ing to make pub­lic. When the time is right, it will be made pub­lic. And I’m not say­ing that I con­done it. But what I would say is that our par­ty, a par­ty that cel­e­brat­ed 70 years re­cent­ly, we have pro­ce­dures, we have prac­tices, and when we do cer­tain things, we know that we do it ac­cord­ing to how the par­ty’s rules and reg­u­la­tions ex­ist.”

She al­so un­der­scored in­clu­siv­i­ty with­in the par­ty.

“I would want to make it very clear that our par­ty val­ues stal­warts, and even if you’re not a stal­wart, we val­ue the opin­ions of the young peo­ple, we val­ue the opin­ions of the women’s league.”

Beck­les said she main­tains open of­fice days at Bal­isi­er House, trav­els across con­stituen­cies and al­lows any mem­ber of the gen­er­al coun­cil to di­rect­ly ques­tion her, pub­licly or pri­vate­ly, call­ing it a lev­el of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty she said did not ex­ist un­der pre­vi­ous lead­er­ship.