Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford and Sascha Wil­son

?He is back! And Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley will take cen­tre stage at to­day's pre­sen­ta­tion of PNM can­di­dates at Wood­ford Square in Port-of-Spain. Row­ley will not on­ly share the po­lit­i­cal plat­form with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, but has al­so been giv­en speak­ing time on the pro­gramme. It will be the first time in two years that Man­ning and Row­ley will be com­ing to­geth­er in sol­i­dar­i­ty since he was dis­missed as Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter in 2008. All doubts and fears of Row­ley be­ing axed from the par­ty, fol­low­ing the can­cel­la­tion of a cot­tage meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy, were quashed yes­ter­day. Sun­day Guardian learnt from re­li­able sources that the par­ty's Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Jer­ry Narace an­nounced at a pri­vate meet­ing at Man­ning's San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day that Row­ley was among speak­ers who will be de­liv­er­ing spe­cial re­marks at the of­fi­cial pre­sen­ta­tion of the par­ty's 41 can­di­dates. Al­so list­ed to de­liv­er com­ments is Ari­ma can­di­date Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing who re­places Deputy Speak­er Pen­ne­lope Beck­les. Out­go­ing Princes Town South/Tabe­land MP Pe­ter Tay­lor, who is out of the race, has been giv­en the task to in­tro­duce the can­di­dates. A youth speak­er is al­so list­ed on the agen­da, with Man­ning sched­uled to de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress.

The source said: Man­ning told those present at yes­ter­day's meet­ing to " let the heal­ing be­gin." The source said: "The heal­ing process has def­i­nite­ly be­gun in the PNM. The Prime Min­is­ter made the first step by al­low­ing Row­ley to fight his seat and he must be com­mend­ed for this. There is no stop­ping this PNM at all. Like all po­lit­i­cal par­ties we all have wran­gling but when it is time to come to­geth­er we ce­ment our forces. "Row­ley has a fol­low­ing like no oth­er can­di­date with­in this par­ty. He alone can win three seats on his own. He is strong and is the one per­son that can safe­ly en­sure that To­ba­go stays to the PNM." How­ev­er, when Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Row­ley yes­ter­day he was un­able to speak be­cause he was in the mid­dle of meet­ing on­ly briefly say­ing: "I am busy, very busy. I can­not speak now." Sources said each con­stituen­cy was asked to bring 1,000 sup­port­ers as the par­ty tar­gets a gath­er­ing of 41,000. Sun­day Guardian learnt that up to late last evening there was a mad rush to se­cure trans­porta­tion for con­stituents.

No plot

?In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal is deny­ing any plot or con­spir­a­cy to bring down Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress chair­man Jack Warn­er. Parsan­lal dis­missed Warn­er's claims that the gov­ern­ment was us­ing tax­pay­ers mon­ey to have British jour­nal­ist An­drew Jen­nings fab­ri­cate a sto­ry to de­fame him. "The gov­ern­ment does not need a con­spir­a­cy to bring down any­body. We have an elec­tion to win, Parsan­lal said as he left the meet­ing yes­ter­day." Man­ning re­fused to take any ques­tions be­fore and af­ter the three-hour long meet­ing yes­ter­day say­ing on­ly: "I am here to meet with my can­di­dates, that's my pur­pose for be­ing here. I will talk at Wood­ford Square." Man­ning lat­er met with some of his con­stituents at the Pleas­antville Bas­ket­ball Court. The meet­ing was closed to the me­dia.