Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is smil­ing and has a new bounce in its step.The vic­to­ry in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion on Jan­u­ary 21 has re-en­er­gised the par­ty and plans are al­ready un­der way to pre­pare for the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, ex­pect­ed around Ju­ly.So said PNM chair­man Franklin Khan yes­ter­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence af­ter the par­ty's first gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

The par­ty, he said, in­tend­ed "to beat the iron while it hot."Khan said, "We have im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed the process to put our con­stituen­cy on alert to pre­pare for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions."By the next gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing next month, we will be able to tell you some­thing more spe­cif­ic as to what mech­a­nisms we are putting in place to start prepa­ra­tions for that elec­tion."

Pub­lic meet­ings are ex­pect­ed to re­sume on Feb­ru­ary 26. That first meet­ing will take place at Hi-Lo car park in St Au­gus­tine. Each Tues­day the par­ty will move in­to a dif­fer­ent area to ad­dress cit­i­zens and sup­port­ers."We will be hit­ting the roads once again and as I said, we will be beat­ing the iron while it is hot and we will be call­ing for can­di­dates very, very soon," Khan said.

Among is­sues dis­cussed at the meet­ing was the PNM's suc­cess in the THA elec­tion and its ac­tiv­i­ties for 2013.Khan said the vic­to­ry was at­trib­uted to three ma­jor fac­tors:

�2 The PNM grant­ed full au­ton­o­my to the To­ba­go coun­cil to han­dle its af­fairs

�2 The PNM was pleased with the choice of can­di­dates

�2 The PNM re­spect­ed the sen­ti­ments of To­ba­go, full con­fi­dence in To­bag­o­ni­ans

Khan said those fac­tors re­sult­ed in "a tsuna­mi" that left the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple with­out any seats.