Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Poli­ical Re­porter

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) San Fer­nan­do East can­di­date Bri­an Man­ning feels for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young has a role to play in the par­ty’s fu­ture, while de­feat­ed San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date Faris Al-Rawi has point­ed out that 100,000 peo­ple who didn’t turn out to vote for the PNM, didn’t turn up to vote for the UNC ei­ther.

Each spoke on Wednes­day en route to the PNM’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing which fol­lowed Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion de­feat of the PNM by the UNC.

Man­ning was among 12 PNM MPs who sup­port­ed Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son to be the Op­po­si­tion Leader. He said he was hap­py for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley had done the dig­ni­fied thing in re­sign­ing.

He said of Young: “Re­gard­less of what’s hap­pened, he’s a very ca­pa­ble, hard-work­ing in­di­vid­ual and has con­tributed a lot to this par­ty in the pre­vi­ous PNM gov­ern­ment, so there is a fu­ture for Mr Young to play in the PNM.”

Man­ning had said the peo­ple had spo­ken in Mon­day’s elec­tion.

“It’s time for us to lis­ten to what was said, re­group, do some in­tro­spec­tion and de­cide what it is we must do bet­ter to bet­ter serve the peo­ple. Many be­lieve it was too much of a top-down ap­proach in terms of how we gov­erned and how the par­ty was op­er­at­ing,” he said.

He said he was go­ing to call for an end to the one- one-man-one-vote sys­tem.

“It is ab­solute­ly in my view that that sys­tem had de­stroyed the par­ty group sys­tem with­in the PNM and the par­ty group sys­tem is the one com­pet­i­tive ad­vanatge this par­ty has had since In­de­pen­dence in terms of win­ning elec­tions,” Man­ning said.

The par­ty group sys­tem we had en­sures that per­sons who are ac­tive in the par­ty and con­tribut­ing to its de­vel­op­ment are the ones who have a voice and say on what hap­pens with­in it, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of who should be leader.”

Faris: 100,000 didn’t vote for UNC ei­ther

Al-Rawi con­grat­u­lat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on a very con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry as well as his op­po­nent Dr Michael Dowlath and the TPP.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­turn was a mark of re­silience.

“That you have to stop and ad­mire but I, cer­tain­ly as a PNM mem­ber, in­tend to be part of its re­build­ing and reen­er­gis­ing. I sup­port my par­ty 100 per cent. I’ll be out there re­gard­less of what post I have.”

Al-Rawi said there was a na­tion­al swing in Mon­day’s poll.

“When you lose places like Point Fortin and La Brea and the East-West Cor­ri­dor is af­fect­ed, I was gen­uine­ly con­cerned about a stay-home vote. My mar­gin of de­feat in San Fer­nan­do West didn’t re­sem­ble oth­er mar­gins. It was a much small­er mar­gin than oth­ers,” he said.

Al-Rawi added: “We’re in a very re­flec­tive state in the PNM. There are points of da­ta that tell us a num­ber of things. It demon­strates that 100,000 peo­ple didn’t turn up to vote for the PNM who usu­al­ly do. What warms me is they didn’t turn up to vote for the UNC ei­ther and that’s a very telling sto­ry in­side of the PNM re­flec­tions.

“This is by far the low­est elec­tion turnout I’ve seen. We’re down from 2020 when there was COVID. This demon­strates that peo­ple just didn’t turn up. There’s a mes­sage be­hind that very loud and clear and one that I’ve been speak­ing about as well.

“In San Fer­nan­do West whilst I won all of the usu­al polling di­vi­sions that I win, and even held my ground in polling di­vi­sions where I don’t usu­al­ly win, the mar­gins were just small­er than be­fore and be­cause of that there was a win,” he said, not­ing the UNC’s con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty now.

Al-Rawi said he felt a cer­tain sense of light­ness about where the PNM is.

“I’ve been in op­po­si­tion be­fore, I joined the op­po­si­tion in 2010 and op­po­si­tion isn’t some­thing that I’m afraid of. You can do a lot if you’re in­ter­est­ed in build­ing prop­er­ly, so I’m very much look­ing for­ward to that process. PNM has my full sup­port.”

De­feat­ed Aranguez/St Joseph can­di­date Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said he was part of the re­build­ing process in 2010 and is of­fer­ing him­self for the re­build­ing process again in any ca­pac­i­ty.

De­feat­ed To­co-San­gre Grande can­di­date Roger Mon­roe said he would con­tin­ue stand­ing with the peo­ple in the con­stituen­cy.

“I hope they get the rep­re­sen­ta­tion that was lever­aged to them over 2020 to 2025,” he said.