Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women co-ordinator, Hazel Brown, has called on Prime Minister Patrick Manning to stop picking on his Arima MP, Pennelope Beckles, after she expressed praise for the woman who would be fighting Manning to become Trinidad and Tobago's next Prime Minister in the 2010 general election. Brown said that it was "stupid" that Manning would have reservations about Beckles representing her Arima constituents for the People's National Movement (PNM) because she commended Manning's rival, United National Congress (UNC) political leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, on becoming Opposition Leader. "It is just the stupidness of Patrick Manning," Brown said in a telephone interview with the T&T Guardian. "Let him (Manning) not pick on Penny, because all of the women in the PNM who know that they have benefited from what Kamla has done and who know that they congratulated her (Kamla) did it."
Brown stressed that the highest-ranking PNM female official, PNM deputy political leader Joan Yuille-Williams, congratulated Persad-Bissessar on her political achievement at the Network of NGOs of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women's International Women's Day function last month. "I want to say for the public information that it was not only Pennelope from the PNM women that congratulated Kamla...It goes to the highest level: Joan Yuille-Williams, (congratulated Kamla) at our International Women's Day function," Brown said. She added that PNM screening committee member, Nafeesa Mohammed, also applauded Persad-Bissessar. At an Advocates for Safe Parenthood: Improving Reproductive Equity function, themed Women In Power which was held last month at the Cascadia Hotel, Beckles said that Persad-Bissessar's success could be seen as an example for all women to emulate and not a triumph for East Indian women alone.
It has affected her chances on returning to the polls as the PNM general election candidate for Arima. The Manning-chaired PNM screening committee was unable to decide on confirming Beckles' nomination after she was screened on Friday night. Beckles was challenged for the Arima candidacy by former PNM senator Laurel Lezama.�"Patrick Manning's stupidness does not represent that PNM," Brown said. "From our experience from encouraging women to participate in politics, women across party lines have been willing to sit together and work together and that has been our experience in the last 15 years." Brown pointed out that it was not the first time that Beckles appeared to run into a bad encounter with Manning. "She knows how to deal with that...She has been dealing with Patrick Manning since the last elections," she said. "So she knows how to deal with him. I have no fear that she knows how to deal with him." After the Manning-led PNM won the 2007 general election, Manning failed to reappoint Beckles to a ministerial position. "We women are sticking together," Brown said.
"The women in the PNM who have courage to speak their mind will have our support. All of them. As the women in the COP and the women in the UNC. All of them." Beckles has been serving as Arima MP since 2000. An attorney-at-law by profession, Beckles was the first woman to be elected House of Representatives Deputy Speaker on December 17, 2007, in the ninth Parliament. Beckles also held various portfolios from Minster of Social Development, Minister of Culture and Tourism and Minister of Public Utilities and the Environment. She first entered Parliament in 1995 as an Opposition PNM senator. Beckles, who was an Arima resident, was involved in two Arima community organisations–the Arima Foundation for the Advancement of Women and Children and the Santa Rosa Heights Community Group. Beckles' political experience includes vice- chairmanship of the Arima Constituency Group, membership of the PNM's General Council and serving as public relations officer of the National Women's League.