Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Two years af­ter sacked Diego Mar­tin West MP Kei­th Row­ley was fired from Cab­i­net, he made his first of­fi­cial re­turn to the fold of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment(PNM)yes­ter­day. Row­ley was among the 40 can­di­dates sum­moned to a pri­vate meet­ing at the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Top par­ty sources re­vealed that he was warm­ly wel­comed. "He has been of­fi­cial­ly wel­comed back in­to the fold. When he came face to face with Man­ning, they were very cor­dial to each oth­er. The heal­ing has def­i­nite­ly be­gun." How­ev­er, no­tably ab­sent was Princes Town South/Table­land MP Pe­ter Tay­lor, who sud­den­ly with­drew his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers.

All can­di­dates were ac­com­pa­nied by cam­paign man­agers and chair­men of their re­spec­tive con­stituen­cies. The meet­ing was chaired by the par­ty's gen­er­al sec­re­tary Mar­tin Joseph and chair­man Con­rad Enill. Top par­ty sources re­vealed to Sun­day Guardian that the Prime Min­is­ter con­vened the meet­ing to in­form can­di­dates of the dos and don'ts on the cam­paign trail, and to don their bat­tle gear. Can­di­dates who failed to com­ply with the guide­lines of the cam­paign would be dis­ci­plined, sources re­vealed.

"With the elec­tions less than one month away, the par­ty is do­ing some strate­gic plan­ning. We are ready to fight and win, but there are cer­tain guide­lines that must be fol­lowed. "Many of the new can­di­dates were ad­vised to stay away from the war of words be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion dur­ing their walk­a­bouts or on the plat­form, be­cause of their in­ex­pe­ri­ence. "They were told to stick to lo­cal is­sues and make ab­solute­ly no promis­es." The par­ty will of­fi­cial­ly launch its slate of can­di­dates on Sun­day at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain.

Ryan: Row­ley boosts PNM chances

The re­turn of Row­ley in­to the PNM fold has al­most au­to­mat­i­cal­ly boost­ed the par­ty's chances, and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Sel­wyn Ryan says his in­clu­sion is what may prob­a­bly save the par­ty from a com­pre­hen­sive de­feat. "I can­not say in per­cent­age points by how much their sup­port has in­creased. I will say the in­clu­sion of Row­ley and his re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion would en­hance the PNM po­lit­i­cal stock, to the point where it may make a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence. "I would strong­ly as­sume it has pushed up the poll."