While the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) says it’s pray­ing for ex-min­is­ter Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald’s health, the par­ty has al­so stressed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been ve­he­ment in de­nounc­ing cor­rup­tion and wrong-do­ing.

Par­ty pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day of­fi­cial­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing deputy leader Mc­Don­ald’s sit­u­a­tion as she “tra­vers­es this dif­fi­cult part of her life’s jour­ney.”

Mc­Don­ald was slapped with sev­en charges on Sun­day night af­ter po­lice ar­rest­ed she and her com­mon-law hus­band, Michael Carew, last Thurs­day.

The PNM stat­ed, “While un­doubt­ed­ly sad­dened by this turn of events, the par­ty is thank­ful for the yeo­man ser­vice Ms. Mc­Don­ald has pro­vid­ed, both as a Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for leg­isla­tive mat­ters and as the Port of Spain South MP for the past 12 years. The Par­ty al­so re­calls with grat­i­tude her stint as Chief Whip in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion years of 2010-2015.”

The PNM stat­ed that the mat­ters for which Mc­Don­ald and the oth­ers are charged al­leged­ly oc­curred “many years” be­fore she was ap­point­ed to the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2015 and for which Mc­Don­ald was twice ex­on­er­at­ed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion.”

“That notwith­stand­ing, the PNM has long stood on the side of the law, and par­tic­u­lar­ly un­der the stew­ard­ship of Dr Row­ley, has been ve­he­ment in its de­nun­ci­a­tion of cor­rup­tion and wrong­do­ing, ir­re­spec­tive of the per­pe­tra­tor’s creed, colour, so­cial sta­tus, gen­der or po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion.”

The state­ment con­tin­ued: “In this re­gard, and mind­ful the mat­ter is now be­fore the courts, the par­ty wish­es to reaf­firm its com­mit­ment to the in­de­pen­dence of the ma­jor stake­hold­ers in this on­go­ing sit­u­a­tion - the Po­lice Ser­vice, the of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions, and the Ju­di­cia­ry. It is in the strength­en­ing of that in­de­pen­dence, and the time­ly ex­e­cu­tion of their func­tions, that con­fi­dence will be re­posed once again in our in­sti­tu­tions, and the new so­ci­ety of which our po­lit­i­cal leader speaks, will be cre­at­ed.”

Mc­Don­ald’s col­leagues again ral­lied around yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing word that she seemed ill.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said she had busi­ness near St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre and would pass to see if she could see Mc­Don­ald.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who was near the Cen­tre - en route to her den­tist, she said - added that Mc­Don­ald was a PNM mem­ber and “We all need to be con­cerned for her well be­ing, we must sup­port her and the Gov­ern­ment has to go on.”

Mc­Don­ald’s Par­lia­men­tary col­league, Dr Lovell Fran­cis said on a so­cial me­dia post, he knew a dif­fer­ent per­son to the some­times gruff politi­cian peo­ple thought Mc­Don­ald was.

“The charges against my col­league are se­ri­ous and there’s no way around that fact. She’ll have her day in court and ev­i­dence will dic­tate the out­come,” he said.