Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lead­er­ship of­fi­cials have de­nied that San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning was “bul­lied” at last Fri­day’s vir­tu­al Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing and that his mi­cro­phone alone was mut­ed.

Man­ning said yes­ter­day that he had not seen the In­quiry and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion re­ports about the San Fer­nan­do East is­sues he had raised with the lead­er­ship and not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the re­ports.

How­ev­er, he con­firmed that he tried to raise this at last Fri­day’s Coun­cil meet­ing, but oth­er mem­bers felt he should not have been al­lowed to speak and was “mut­ed” at the meet­ing.

The in­ci­dent has since drawn crit­i­cism from some PNM Coun­cil mem­bers and for­mer gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, who de­cried the “bul­ly­ing” of Man­ning and said his “mic” was mut­ed and he was shout­ed down.

PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­clined com­ment to Guardian Me­dia’s queries on the bul­ly­ing claims.

How­ev­er, oth­er PNM lead­er­ship of­fi­cials dis­put­ed the claims, say­ing those mak­ing them were ei­ther be­ing mis­led by per­sons with agen­das “or just pre­fer to show no re­gard to facts and truth.”

Some PNM ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers said Man­ning spoke for sev­er­al min­utes but con­tin­ued to in­ter­ject while oth­er per­sons were speak­ing.

They said oth­er speak­ers then be­gan in­sist­ing on be­ing al­lowed to speak freely—rather than hav­ing Man­ning speak at the same time as them—and a call to or­der even­tu­al­ly had to be made amid the ris­ing calls against him speak­ing at the same time they did.

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers, PNM deputy leader San­jiv Bood­hu, who was the host of the meet­ing, then mut­ed “every­one’s mi­cro­phones, in­clud­ing the chair­man’s ‘mic’ —and not on­ly Man­ning’s ‘mic’ alone” to re­store or­der.”