GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ad­mit­ted on Sat­ur­day night that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had lost its way. She fur­ther stat­ed that the par­ty was in op­po­si­tion be­cause many of its of­fi­cers fell down on the job.

In a strong­ly word­ed ad­dress as she pre­pares to of­fi­cial­ly as­sume the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader, the Ari­ma MP sent a warn­ing to can­di­dates con­test­ing the PNM’s in­ter­nal elec­tions lat­er this month.

“We can­not move for­ward if they con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in the way they’re op­er­at­ing,” she said.

Beck­les, who spoke at a meet­ing of One Par­ty, one of the slates con­test­ing the in­ter­nal polls, ex­pressed con­cern that some mem­bers of the par­ty were “at­tack­ing peo­ple in a way we have nev­er seen in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”

She al­so said there was a need for truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with­in the PNM fol­low­ing its re­cent elec­tion de­feat.

“As painful as it is, it is im­por­tant for us to re­alise that as we build the par­ty we have to unite and we have to be one as a PNM,” she said.

“When you learn your les­son and you go through the his­to­ry of the par­ty for the last 70 years, it is be­cause no mat­ter what hap­pened, no mat­ter if we lost, no mat­ter if can­di­dates didn’t win, we found a mech­a­nism to come back to­geth­er through all the hurt and the pain and make sure that we go to­geth­er as one PNM,” she stressed.

Beck­les high­light­ed the im­por­tance of mak­ing the PNM more in­clu­sive, not just for long-time sup­port­ers but for the wider pop­u­la­tion. She said the par­ty need­ed to lis­ten more and en­gage di­rect­ly with cit­i­zens to re­gain their con­fi­dence.

“One com­mon thread is that the lead­er­ship be­came dis­con­nect­ed from the mem­ber­ship. An­oth­er com­mon thread is that we were not lis­ten­ing and the oth­er one was the fact that they saw mem­bers of the lead­er­ship on­ly around elec­tion.

“Some­where along the line, if we are be­ing hon­est, we have lost our way as it re­lates to the func­tion­ing of many of the arms of our great par­ty. And those who have of­fered them­selves to serve know that we have to do bet­ter be­cause some of the rea­sons why we found our­selves in op­po­si­tion is be­cause many of the of­fi­cers fell down on the job,” she added.

Beck­les, who is un­op­posed for the po­si­tion of po­lit­i­cal leader in the in­ter­nal elec­tions on June 22, heads the One Par­ty slate which al­so in­cludes Mar­vin Gon­za­les (chair­man), Fos­ter Cum­mings (gen­er­al sec­re­tary) Amery Browne (vice-chair­man) and Faris Al-Rawi (pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer).

Not­ing that next year the PNM would cel­e­brate its 70th an­niver­sary, she said every con­stituen­cy lies the foot­prints of for­mer PNM po­lit­i­cal lead­ers Dr Er­ic Williams, George Cham­bers, Patrick Man­ning and Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Fos­ter: Ear­ly elec­tion

didn’t work for PNM

Fos­ter Cum­mings, who is seek­ing the po­si­tion of gen­er­al sec­re­tary ac­knowl­edged that an ear­ly elec­tion did not work for the par­ty. He re­vealed that he was one of those who vot­ed against an ear­ly gen­er­al elec­tion.

“Nine of us stood up and said if you do this we are go­ing to lose. Could you please not ush­er the PNM in­to op­po­si­tion? There were some oth­ers who were not in the nine said so as well,” he said.

Cum­mings, who al­so called for heal­ing with­in the par­ty, said it was the first time he had seen “the PNM eat­ing each oth­er like how some an­i­mals eat oth­ers.”

“How did we get there?” he asked as he called for those who iden­ti­fied them­selves as “change mak­ers” to be re­buked.

Cum­mings spoke about some of the chal­lenges he faced dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign.

“There was a fel­low there who was my cam­paign man­ag­er and chair­man of the con­stituen­cy. He jumped ship and went to UNC.

“You know it have some peo­ple in red help him? Do you know that some peo­ple in red clothes helped the man be­cause they thought to deal with Cum­mings we could lose La Hor­quet­ta and win some­where else,” he said.

He said the on­ly au­thor­i­ty to se­lect the lead­er­ship of the PNM are mem­bers who have the right to vote to do so.

“Some peo­ple will not like me for that and that is okay. I stand for truth, so if you find there is some noise sur­round­ing this per­son­al­i­ty at this point in time, a lot of it com­ing from per­sons who should know bet­ter, it is be­cause I stand for truth,” he de­clared.

Cum­mings al­so ac­cused the UNC Gov­ern­ment of quick­ly mov­ing to shut down all of the pro­grammes the PNM start­ed for young peo­ple.