DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader and sole nom­i­nee for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lead­er­ship Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­mains un­fazed by the ap­par­ent lack of sup­port from key par­ty fig­ures, in­clud­ing stal­wart Fer­die Fer­reira and MPs Stu­art Young and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

In her first press con­fer­ence as the in­com­ing PNM po­lit­i­cal leader, Beck­les took no of­fence to Fer­reira al­leged­ly say­ing he did not sup­port her for leader but wished her well.

“I don’t know of any per­son who be­comes a leader that you will have every­body sup­port­ing you ini­tial­ly,” Beck­les said.

“If you look from Er­ic Williams, George Cham­bers, Mr (Patrick) Man­ning, Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley—when there is a change in lead­er­ship, those are things you are go­ing to ex­pect,” she said.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that tran­si­tions could be tur­bu­lent, Beck­les added, “I am not go­ing to fool my­self in­to be­liev­ing that the tran­si­tion is go­ing to be easy. So that yes, you may have a Fer­die Fer­reira say­ing he doesn’t sup­port you as leader. There may be sev­er­al peo­ple ... but if you have ac­cept­ed the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to lead, it is your du­ty as the leader to reach out to per­sons who are dis­en­chant­ed ... and do your best to be the best pos­si­ble leader.”

Asked about crit­i­cisms of her per­son­al­i­ty, in­clud­ing be­ing la­belled “bor­ing”, Beck­les brushed them aside and reaf­firmed her com­mit­ment to vis­it­ing con­stituen­cies and en­gag­ing with the pop­u­la­tion.

She al­so re­vealed that nei­ther for­mer PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Row­ley nor for­mer prime min­is­ter Young had con­tact­ed her af­ter she be­came the sole nom­i­nee for PNM po­lit­i­cal leader. But she main­tained that in­ter­nal fric­tion is not un­usu­al in po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

“Peo­ple are hu­man, you know. Politi­cians are all hu­man. So, the point about it is you have to be ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted to un­der­stand that when you are re­moved from gov­ern­ment to op­po­si­tion, there is a lot of pain,” she said.

Beck­les re­called how for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning once took two weeks in Saly­bia to re­group af­ter an elec­toral loss. She said she was now do­ing her own ver­sion of that heal­ing, even as she con­tin­ues to build a uni­fied team.

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said Young’s so­cial me­dia post about not con­test­ing the in­ter­nal elec­tions re­flect­ed his con­cerns with the par­ty’s di­rec­tion. He said Young’s com­ment, “time is longer than twine”, was an in­di­ca­tion that he was not com­plete­ly step­ping away from po­lit­i­cal as­pi­ra­tions. He sug­gest­ed that Young may be await­ing a fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­assert him­self with­in the par­ty, es­pe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing his pre­vi­ous close as­so­ci­a­tion with for­mer prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley.

“Whether he feels that at some point in time, Pen­ne­lope will fall and fall on her own sword or any­body else in the PNM ... Well, I don’t know who is the any­body else. But clear­ly, when you look—I mean, when I looked at the me­dia to­day and the pic­tures in the me­dia, and I see who are the MPs who sur­round­ed Pen­ne­lope as she took the po­lit­i­cal leader po­si­tion, and you no­tice some of them miss­ing and you ask your­self why. I mean, is it that you have di­vi­sion with­in the PNM? And that is pos­si­ble.”

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James said Young would have a dif­fi­cult time emerg­ing from the po­lit­i­cal fringes.

“He’s now say­ing to us that ‘time longer than twine’. That’s a thing we have, and it means there’s still time for him to come back to re­con­test. But five years is a long time if you’re in the wilder­ness, you know.

“If he thinks he will eas­i­ly get back some po­si­tion in the PNM now that he has put him­self out be­cause he’s not hap­py that he was pushed out of the po­si­tion ... ‘time longer than twine’ is al­most as if he’s warn­ing and cau­tion­ing and threat­en­ing us.”

He fur­ther crit­i­cised the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP’s de­ci­sion not to con­test any po­si­tion in the PNM’s new ex­ec­u­tive, call­ing his ex­pla­na­tion vague and un­con­vinc­ing. Young had said he spent time re­flect­ing and ob­serv­ing oth­ers post-elec­tion and con­clud­ed it was not in the par­ty’s best in­ter­est for him to seek a lead­er­ship role. But James ar­gued that Young’s lack of de­tail left too much room for spec­u­la­tion. He ques­tioned why some­one once en­dorsed as prime min­is­te­r­i­al ma­te­r­i­al would back away now, pre­cise­ly when strong lead­er­ship is need­ed.

“If you had the tal­ent to be PM six weeks ago, you still have it now,” James said.

He de­scribed Young’s state­ment on Mon­day as “waf­fle” that lacked the depth ex­pect­ed from some­one of his cal­i­bre.