Gail Alexan­der

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion Gov­ern­ment is falling apart.That was the opin­ion of the Op­po­si­tion PNM yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the MSJ's move out of the Part­ner­ship.PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley and deputy leader Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald did not an­swer calls yes­ter­day.

Row­ley is on leave from the Par­lia­ment un­til June 25, it was an­nounced in Par­lia­ment last week. PNM of­fi­cials said he was in Cal­i­for­nia, USA. PNM MP Colm Im­bert, how­ev­er, said: "The part­ner­ship is falling apart and this was on the cards for a long time. "The COP threat­ened to pull out the oth­er day so ob­vi­ous­ly things were not go­ing too well for them," he said.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly this MSJ de­vel­op­ment wasn't un­ex­pect­ed as there are a lot of dis­grun­tled peo­ple out there. Peo­ple ex­pect­ed the sun, moon and the stars and they are dis­ap­point­ed. But some of the ex­pec­ta­tions were un­re­al­is­tic al­so." PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Forde said:

"This col­lapse was in­evitable be­cause this was a gov­ern­ment con­ceived on bro­ken promis­es and they will die by bro­ken promis­es."The peo­ple must note that one of the part­ners is dis­sat­is­fied, then how you ex­pect them to treat the rest of the pop­u­la­tion?" he said."They went in there as one co­he­sive unit and they had all kinds of agree­ment, hug­ging up one an­oth­er and for two years lat­er-not even mid-term-and they fall out."I be­lieve they broke up long ago and to­day is just the nail in the cof­fin but the coun­try must stand up and take note be­cause it's a se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ment when a coali­tion starts to fall apart be­fore mid term."