With news that former finance minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira will be throwing her hat into the ring to vie for the political leadership of the People’s National Movement (PNM), political analysts have weighed in saying that it is a way of saying that there is a need to rebuild confidence in the party.
However, it is believed that Nunez-Tesheira will be facing a big challenge to go up against a political leader who is a sitting prime minister.
Speaking with the Guardian Media, political analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath said it is Nunez-Tesheira’s right and privilege, as a member of the PNM, that she is entitled to contest the leadership level.
Being the first one to challenge Dr Keith Rowley, Ragoonath said she is “clearly staking the claim that there is a need to rebuild confidence in the PNM and she may very well be right, in that regard”.
However, her biggest challenge would be Dr Keith Rowley, who is not only the incumbent as political leader but he is also prime minister and that will be a big challenge for anybody to unseat the sitting prime minister, who is political leader for the simple reason that the party will very well want to hold on to their leader whilst he’s still prime minister.”
“However, Keith Rowley, is the incumbent and he has control over the party machinery and that will dictate that many of the concerns that he being able to control what access to information, membership, all those sort of things that is available at the time being on a timely basis to Nunez-Tesheira so that might present somewhat of a challenge for her. It is a good move but an uphill challenge that she’s undertaking,” he added.
Political analyst Winford James said it would have preferable if someone from “Dr Rowley’s inner circle would have been the one to challenge him but it is someone from the outer circle and from an administration that damned Rowley and Rowley had also damned that administration.”
“A bold move on Karen’s path. We don’t know the kind of support that she has. We know that an outsider within the party will have it very hard to overturn Dr Rowley’s leadership but to the extent that there is support for her and I believe that people are voting by secret ballots so nobody can know how they voted. Karen is probably relying on that,” James added.
Political analyst Shane Mohammed said he believes that if Nunez-Tesheira is given that chance it would allow a “Manning-style of leadership and a Manning-style vision of governance, which in my opinion, is something that we are in dire need for.”
“We should go back to basics in terms of political policies and manifesto policies that speaks to a more diverse economy that includes the agriculture industry, the petroleum industry and the renewable energy resources industry and that is where the government has faltered and that is where I will say that any political party and any political leader that sees it from the vision of being a multi-faceted, multi-prong approach, they have my support,” Mohammed said.