Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has again told elec­tion op­po­nent Karen Nunez-Tesheira to stay out of Peo­ple’s Na­tion Move­ment busi­ness.

He made the bat­tle cry when he ad­dressed a Lead­ers in Ser­vice meet­ing at the Diego Mar­tin South Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Thurs­day night.

This, as the LIS team seeks to win the PNM’s in­ter­nal ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions be­ing con­duct­ed to­day and to­mor­row and con­clud­ing at the De­cem­ber 4 con­ven­tion.

Out of an ini­tial to­tal of 42 can­di­dates, 38 are now con­test­ing. Four of the LIS team have been elect­ed un­op­posed: Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (la­dy vice chair­man), Fos­ter Cum­mings (gen­er­al sec­re­tary), Faris Al Rawi (PRO) and Je­niece Scott (youth of­fi­cer). The LIS team is up against 24 oth­er can­di­dates. Row­ley said elec­tions have con­se­quences, but said he had no dif­fi­cul­ty with any par­ty mem­ber of­fer­ing them­selves.

He said he’d said “pre­cious lit­tle” about lead­er­ship as­pi­rant Nunez-Tesheira. Her court case to de­lay PNM’s elec­tion failed on Wednes­day and she ap­pealed the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day.

Tak­ing is­sue with her claims, Row­ley added, “Tonight I want to say some­thing to her: if you have noth­ing to do and you have no mon­ey to col­lect and you have no curlers to put in your hair—stay out of PNM busi­ness!

“When an MP, a for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter for a few months whose on­ly record that can sur­vive is what was done and wasn’t done around Cli­co and a prop­er­ty tax that was not... I heard my op­po­nent say that some­body of­fered her a sen­a­tor­ship and she re­fused it. I want to make it abun­dant­ly clear that who­ev­er of­fered that la­dy a sen­a­tor­ship, it was not the PNM’s leader.

“Be­cause un­der no cir­cum­stances did I ever con­sid­er any­body with that kind of record to be any sen­a­tor in the op­po­si­tion (of the PNM). And if she name woman, she must name the per­son who of­fered the sen­a­tor­ship!

“As far as I know, the on­ly per­son who could have ap­point­ed sen­a­tors in the op­po­si­tion is me. And I know of no such ap­proach not even con­tem­plat­ed—far less to be of­fered. And then you come to Bal­isi­er House to of­fer to be the leader?”

Row­ley said when he be­came PNM leader, Nunez-Tesheira was just go­ing out of of­fice. He said among the things he met was a huge debt PNM owed, peo­ple de­mand­ing pay­ment and Bal­isi­er House staff couldn’t be paid.

He said as po­lit­i­cal leader, he’s al­so chair­man of the do­na­tions com­mit­tee.

“...Mean­ing, you have to find mon­ey to run the par­ty...”

He said he went to a par­ty mem­ber who “isn’t with­out some means” and re­lat­ed the sit­u­a­tion of be­ing un­able to pay staff and the per­son gave Row­ley the sup­port to pay the two months that was ow­ing and for an ex­tra month.

“If a par­ty mem­ber would have done that, what busi­ness is that of Karen Tesheira and Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar?”

An­oth­er mem­ber to whom Row­ley al­so laid out PNM’s case, promised to help—but didn’t give any funds.

“I re­mem­ber dri­ving from there to my home think­ing how PNM had helped some peo­ple and I went to this man who could help and he didn’t give me a dol­lar.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, the tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t be­lieve that in­grat­i­tude could be so in­grained in some peo­ple, that you could have ben­e­fit­ed so much from the PNM—and he let me leave with­out a dol­lar...”

On ac­cu­sa­tions about the Bal­isi­er House con­struc­tion, he said in the last 12 years, the par­ty had been rais­ing mon­ey to build new head­quar­ters on land in­her­it­ed from late founder Dr Er­ic Williams’ days.

He said Fi­nance had au­tho­rised the PNM to do three mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar raf­fles and al­most $30 mil­lion was raised.

“In one raf­fle, we raf­fled ten cars. My­self and (Fitzger­ald) Hinds spent week­end af­ter week­end out­side PriceS­mart and Hi Lo (Now Massy Stores) sell­ing tick­ets. I want to ask Karen Tesheira tonight —that she ask­ing where we get mon­ey from to build Bal­isi­er House—how many tick­ets you bought or sold?”

“And if you didn’t know we were build­ing Bal­isi­er House, you were sur­prised when you came there and see it —then stay to hell out of PNM busi­ness!

“You want to know where we get mon­ey from to build Bal­isi­er House! Twelve years of work and I have to lis­ten to oth­er peo­ple talk­ing about ‘she’s do­ing a won­der­ful thing, she’s de­fend­ing democ­ra­cy’. De­fend­ing democ­ra­cy? The PNM make democ­ra­cy in this coun­try.”