Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Net­work of NGOs of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Ad­vance­ment of Women co-or­di­na­tor, Hazel Brown, has called on Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to stop pick­ing on his Ari­ma MP, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, af­ter she ex­pressed praise for the woman who would be fight­ing Man­ning to be­come Trinidad and To­ba­go's next Prime Min­is­ter in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion. Brown said that it was "stu­pid" that Man­ning would have reser­va­tions about Beck­les rep­re­sent­ing her Ari­ma con­stituents for the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) be­cause she com­mend­ed Man­ning's ri­val, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, on be­com­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader. "It is just the stu­pid­ness of Patrick Man­ning," Brown said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian. "Let him (Man­ning) not pick on Pen­ny, be­cause all of the women in the PNM who know that they have ben­e­fit­ed from what Kam­la has done and who know that they con­grat­u­lat­ed her (Kam­la) did it."

Brown stressed that the high­est-rank­ing PNM fe­male of­fi­cial, PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Joan Yuille-Williams, con­grat­u­lat­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar on her po­lit­i­cal achieve­ment at the Net­work of NGOs of Trinidad and To­ba­go for the Ad­vance­ment of Women's In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day func­tion last month. "I want to say for the pub­lic in­for­ma­tion that it was not on­ly Pen­ne­lope from the PNM women that con­grat­u­lat­ed Kam­la...It goes to the high­est lev­el: Joan Yuille-Williams, (con­grat­u­lat­ed Kam­la) at our In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day func­tion," Brown said. She added that PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee mem­ber, Nafeesa Mo­hammed, al­so ap­plaud­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar. At an Ad­vo­cates for Safe Par­ent­hood: Im­prov­ing Re­pro­duc­tive Eq­ui­ty func­tion, themed Women In Pow­er which was held last month at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, Beck­les said that Per­sad-Bisses­sar's suc­cess could be seen as an ex­am­ple for all women to em­u­late and not a tri­umph for East In­di­an women alone.

It has af­fect­ed her chances on re­turn­ing to the polls as the PNM gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date for Ari­ma. The Man­ning-chaired PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee was un­able to de­cide on con­firm­ing Beck­les' nom­i­na­tion af­ter she was screened on Fri­day night. Beck­les was chal­lenged for the Ari­ma can­di­da­cy by for­mer PNM sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma.�"Patrick Man­ning's stu­pid­ness does not rep­re­sent that PNM," Brown said. "From our ex­pe­ri­ence from en­cour­ag­ing women to par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics, women across par­ty lines have been will­ing to sit to­geth­er and work to­geth­er and that has been our ex­pe­ri­ence in the last 15 years." Brown point­ed out that it was not the first time that Beck­les ap­peared to run in­to a bad en­counter with Man­ning. "She knows how to deal with that...She has been deal­ing with Patrick Man­ning since the last elec­tions," she said. "So she knows how to deal with him. I have no fear that she knows how to deal with him." Af­ter the Man­ning-led PNM won the 2007 gen­er­al elec­tion, Man­ning failed to reap­point Beck­les to a min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion. "We women are stick­ing to­geth­er," Brown said.

"The women in the PNM who have courage to speak their mind will have our sup­port. All of them. As the women in the COP and the women in the UNC. All of them." Beck­les has been serv­ing as Ari­ma MP since 2000. An at­tor­ney-at-law by pro­fes­sion, Beck­les was the first woman to be elect­ed House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Deputy Speak­er on De­cem­ber 17, 2007, in the ninth Par­lia­ment. Beck­les al­so held var­i­ous port­fo­lios from Min­ster of So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture and Tourism and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and the En­vi­ron­ment. She first en­tered Par­lia­ment in 1995 as an Op­po­si­tion PNM sen­a­tor. Beck­les, who was an Ari­ma res­i­dent, was in­volved in two Ari­ma com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions–the Ari­ma Foun­da­tion for the Ad­vance­ment of Women and Chil­dren and the San­ta Rosa Heights Com­mu­ni­ty Group. Beck­les' po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes vice- chair­man­ship of the Ari­ma Con­stituen­cy Group, mem­ber­ship of the PNM's Gen­er­al Coun­cil and serv­ing as pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Na­tion­al Women's League.