The annoyance of the Chaguanas East constituency executive on Monday night as they left a meeting of the PNM's screening committee was only the most recent in a string of contentious engagements between the party's ground troops and its leadership in recent months.
The PNM screening committee again rejected the choices of the constituency executive charged with proposing prospective candidates. It rejected the choice of businessman Neil Ramsingh in favour of newcomer Deowatie Lalchan.
This apparent housecleaning of the PNM's election facing team is a process that is reconfiguring the slate of candidates for the 2015 election to the satisfaction of the party's leadership, but at the possible cost of some support from the rank and file membership, many of whom would be stumping for the candidates.
The screening committee incidents started early in the year, with an embarrassing back and forth between former Prime Minister Patrick Manning and PNM Political leader Dr Keith Rowley on Mr Manning's plans for the San Fernando East constituency seat.
Mr Manning, whose recovery over the last year has been difficult and slow, had missed many sittings of Parliament. His ability to face the demands of a hard fought election campaign were, understandably, in question.
That messy situation that found Mr Manning declining to appear before the committee, ended quietly on February 10, when he wrote to Dr Rowley to indicate that he would be bowing out of politics.
That would ultimately be the least damaging of the conflicts between the PNM screening committee and the constituency teams charged with proposing suitable candidates. Not all of the incumbent candidates dismissed by the committee have sparked concerns that have spilled outside of the PNM's traditional cloak of silence on such matters.
Laventille East/Morvant MP Donna Cox, Laventille West MP Nileung Hypolite, La Brea MP Fitzgerald Jeffrey and Arouca/Maloney MP Alicia Hospedales all seemed to accept their new roles within the party despite being obviously disappointed at being dropped from the election slate. Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West MP Patricia McIntosh and Senator Diane Baldeo-Chadeesingh dropped out of the election race early, Mrs Baldeo-Chadeesingh after being chosen to contest the Chaguanas East seat for the party.
But it was the dropping of Penelope Beckles from the Arima seat and Dr Amery Browne from Diego Martin Central that caused the robust discourse within the party that is still to die down.
At least part of the issue seems to be a lack of clarity among the grassroots supporters about the strategy and intent of the PNM's leadership as it is being expressed by the screening committee's choices.
After more than a dozen prospective candidates have been scrapped into the process, there seems to be something clearly wrong with the lines of communication within the PNM.
The current slate of candidates suggests that the party intends to contest the election as a refreshed political entity. Unfortunately, this hasn't been clearly expressed to the general membership and has led to the idea of Dr Rowley leading by executive fiat rather than broad consultation.
If the PNM is to enter the campaign as a united force, then Dr Rowley must do a better job of communicating his intent, if not the details of his political strategy, to his teams and supporters.
There's a bigger issue. His management of such an important process gives clues as to what kind of manager he'd be as prime minister, should he assume that office.