An­na-Lisa Paul

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira has sought to re­as­sure sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) that she was not fight­ing against the par­ty but rather, she was fight­ing to save the par­ty.

De­clar­ing there was a clear dis­con­nect be­tween the cur­rent lead­er­ship of the PNM and the cit­i­zen­ry, she claimed, “Some­thing is just not right.”

Look­ing at the par­ty’s brand new head­quar­ters cur­rent­ly be­ing erect­ed in New­town, Port-of-Spain – which had seen the old build­ing and its’ foun­da­tion hav­ing to be de­stroyed to make way for the new, she claimed sim­i­lar­ly, “The foun­da­tion of the PNM is un­der threat.”

Con­tin­u­ing her cam­paign meet­ings on Sun­day at the cor­ner of Sun­shine Av­enue and Shende Street, San Juan – Nunez-Tesheira told the small crowd that she is not chal­leng­ing the prime min­is­ter-ship of T&T.

Un­der­scor­ing the feed­back she and her team had been re­ceiv­ing from the pub­lic as they move around, she claimed, “It is clear there is a dis­con­nect.”

Cit­ing a sense of alien­ation and lack of com­pas­sion as two of the gen­er­al com­plaints that had been voiced con­tin­u­ous­ly, she said in­sen­si­tive com­ments “from coal pot to bi­cy­cle” was ev­i­dence of the tone that has been set by the cur­rent lead­er­ship.

Nunez-Tesheira is hop­ing to re­place Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM dur­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tion which is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 4.

Join­ing Nunez-Tesheira was Dr Ken Butch­er, who is vy­ing for the post of par­ty chair­man.

He too echoed her sen­ti­ments, “That things are not right in the coun­try.”

Re­veal­ing that he had been drawn back in­to ac­tive pol­i­tics due to the over­whelm­ing dis­con­tent­ment by the peo­ple, he too spoke of the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty by the par­ty and the cry for good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.

Look­ing back to the time of Dr Er­ic Williams when the par­ty would meet and dis­cuss their op­er­a­tions and strate­gies, he ad­mit­ted that, “Right now, re­la­tions are strained.”

How­ev­er, he stressed, “What we are try­ing to do now is strength­en the par­ty.”

Butch­er said COVID-19 didn’t on­ly kill peo­ple in T&T and world­wide, but it al­so killed some of the PNM par­ty groups which in turn, had un­der­mined the par­ty’s struc­ture.

“We have to build that back,” he said, adding, “We have to close ranks now.”