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Sunday, June 1, 2025

?PNM's Arima, St Ann's make peace

by

20100423

The PNM's Ari­ma con­stituen­cy has made peace and MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and her re­place­ment, Lau­rel Leza­ma Lee Sing, will work to­geth­er, ac­cord­ing to con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive sec­re­tary Bob­by Charles yes­ter­day.

Charles spoke af­ter the ex­ec­u­tive met with Lee Sing on Tues­day. Beck­les and Lee Sing had a sub­se­quent meet­ing, he said. The con­sol­i­da­tion arose af­ter PNM deputy leader Joan Yuille-Williams met with the Ari­ma ex­ec­u­tive on Tues­day to try and paci­fy mem­bers who had con­cerns about Beck­les' re­place­ment. Yes­ter­day, Charles said: "The new can­di­date had a suc­cess­ful meet­ing with the ex­ec­u­tive on Tues­day and she was due to meet Beck­les on Wednes­day. "Beck­les was not at our meet­ing on Tues­day since she had an­oth­er ap­point­ment. But we have turned a page on this is­sue." Charles al­so said the ex­ec­u­tive had "turned the page" re­gard­ing its claim that PNM leader Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had an­nounced Lee Sing as the prospec­tive can­di­date be­fore the de­ci­sion was com­plete­ly rat­i­fied.

On that is­sue, Charles added: "The gen­er­al sec­re­tary sent us a writ­ten apol­o­gy and we have ac­cept­ed that. So Ari­ma will re­main PNM." Charles re­it­er­at­ed that Beck­les would not ac­cept ad­vances which were made re­cent­ly by the COP for her to con­test Ari­ma on that tick­et. He added: "That's a no-no. When Ru­pert Grif­fith crossed the floor to the UNC Gov­ern­ment I was al­so asked to come across. "I didn't do it and Mrs Beck­les would nev­er let down her stan­dards ei­ther. I can vouch for that. We have our ups and downs in PNM but we fight the cause to­geth­er." Mean­while, in an­oth­er PNM area–St Ann's East–which had had prob­lems Roslyn Thomas, sec­re­tary of that ex­ec­u­tive, said out­go­ing MP An­tho­ny Roberts hand­ed over the reins to new can­di­date Joanne Thomas on Tues­day.

The ex­ec­u­tive had protest­ed re­plac­ing Roberts with Thomas. How­ev­er Thomas said the ex­ec­u­tive had ac­cept­ed the de­ci­sion and was mo­bil­is­ing the con­stituen­cy to sup­port the new can­di­date. She added: "At our meet­ing on Tues­day MP Roberts pre­sent­ed the new can­di­date to the ex­ec­u­tive and he thanked us and area coun­cil­lors for the sup­port. "He didn't say if he would be ac­tive­ly on the cam­paign with us, but he re­mains open for con­sul­ta­tion. We al­ways get his co-op­er­a­tion when we call for it. I'm sure the sit­u­a­tion will con­tin­ue. "Cur­rent­ly he's re­lax­ing and en­joy­ing a qui­et time. We'll miss him but that's life. You have to move on at some time." Thomas added: "We haven't dis­cussed whether he will take her around the area but I don't think he will say no. "It may have been up­set­ting the way he was treat­ed but the new can­di­date was not re­spon­si­ble for what hap­pened. We're in con­tact with him and if nec­es­sary will call on his sup­port ."

Thomas did not think the par­ty would lose the seat. But she ad­mit­ted some votes may be lost due to the is­sue of Roberts' re­moval. She added: " I don't think those per­sons would vote UNC. They may sim­ply not vote. But when we move around we'll know the ex­tent of the sit­u­a­tion."


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