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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Amery: My focus now is on being a good minister

by

KAY-MARIE FLETCHER
35 days ago
20250122

Amid swirling ru­mours sur­round­ing the rea­son be­hind his last-minute de­ci­sion to with­draw his con­sent to be screened for the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne is keep­ing his rea­sons close to his chest.

How­ev­er, un­like his col­league, Laven­tille East-Mor­vant MP Adri­an Leonce, who sim­i­lar­ly pulled out of the race at the last minute, Browne de­nied it was for the same rea­sons.

He told Guardian Me­dia, “It has noth­ing to do with any per­son­al rea­son.”

On Jan­u­ary 10, Browne penned a let­ter to the par­ty’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Fos­ter Cum­mings, in­di­cat­ing his con­sent to be nom­i­nat­ed for the Diego Mar­tin West seat.

One week lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 17, Browne sent a with­draw­al let­ter to the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

The se­lec­tion process nar­rowed the field to five prospec­tive can­di­dates, but on­ly two had con­firmed par­ty group sup­port: me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Hans de Vi­gnes (12 groups) and ex­ec­u­tive vice chair­man Yokym­ma Bethelmy (2 groups).

Browne’s de­ci­sion to drop out of the race has spurred claims that he re­ceived no sup­port from par­ty groups and that he was forced to drop out.

But Browne is choos­ing not to pay naysay­ers any mind.

Asked to re­spond to peo­ple say­ing he was forced out of the race and des Vi­gnes is go­ing to be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent PNM at the polls for Diego Mar­tin West, he said, “I don’t want to get in­to the to and fro on those type of mat­ters. It’s nev­er re­al­ly been my style, and it nev­er will be.”

Asked if he was step­ping down from rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al pol­i­tics this time around or if he was plan­ning to screen for an­oth­er con­stituen­cy, he said. “I don’t have any con­stituen­cy. What I can tell you is my fo­cus at this time is ex­clu­sive­ly on be­ing the best pos­si­ble Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.”

Browne served as Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP for two con­sec­u­tive terms from 2007 to 2015.

On Jan­u­ary 3, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced his in­ten­tion to re­sign.

Fol­low­ing his an­nounce­ment, Browne was con­sid­ered the front-run­ner to re­place Row­ley in the seat.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Row­ley for com­ment on this is­sue but re­ceived no re­sponse up to press time.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Row­ley’s con­stituen­cy, many con­stituents said they hoped Browne would be the PM’s re­place­ment.

Asked what he now has to say to those peo­ple, he replied, “My on­ly mes­sage to sup­port­ers of Amery Browne, if such a thing ex­ists, is to con­tin­ue to work hard, to step for­ward in every re­spect with in­tegri­ty, with dig­ni­ty, with deco­rum, with re­gard for each oth­er, and for the beau­ti­ful di­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Nev­er lose hope. Nev­er lose faith and nev­er lose strength to try a bit hard­er to­mor­row.”

Al­so out of the race is in­cum­bent La Brea MP Stephen Mc Clashie.

Mc Clashie was the on­ly in­cum­bent MP re­ject­ed for re-se­lec­tion by the PNM’s screen­ing com­mit­tee on De­cem­ber 2.

The par­ty in­struct­ed the La Brea con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive to find and screen new can­di­dates, as they al­so re­ject­ed Jil­lon Lewis.

Mc Clashie told Guardian Me­dia, “I am out of the race com­plete­ly. We have two can­di­dates that are go­ing be­fore the screen­ing com­mit­tee, Jer­mel Pierre and Ran­dall Mitchell, and they both will be screened on Thurs­day.”

Asked if he was dis­ap­point­ed be­ing over­looked, he said, “I have a phi­los­o­phy that says, and this is just me, it is as it was sup­posed to be”, and there­fore all that has cul­mi­nat­ed in this par­tic­u­lar de­ci­sion, I trust God that all those things were con­spir­ing to­wards my bet­ter­ment.”

But this may not be the end of the road for him, as he re­vealed he is still will­ing to serve the na­tion.

Mc Clashie said, “I am not ex­pect­ing to be of­fered any­thing, but if I am and I feel good about it, I will of­fer my­self to serve.”

He al­so asked his con­stituents to for­get the “pet­ty pol­i­tics” and put the PNM back in of­fice.


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