Out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning is mov­ing to give up the lead­er­ship of the par­ty fol­low­ing Mon­day's heavy de­feat at the polls. Man­ning ad­vanced his plan to "dis­en­gage him­self" from the lead­er­ship of the PNM dur­ing a meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day with the can­di­dates in Mon­day's elec­tion. He al­so spoke about his de­ci­sion dur­ing a meet­ing of the PNM lead­er­ship at the of­fice of the po­lit­i­cal leader at Bal­isi­er House. Among those who at­tend­ed that meet­ing were chair­man Con­rad Enill, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Mar­tin Joseph, deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, Joan Yuille-Williams, Orville Lon­don, Nafeesa Mo­hammed and Dr Lenny Saith. Among can­di­dates who at­tend­ed the meet­ing were Diego Mar­tin West MP Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon. The PNM was de­feat­ed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship by 29 seats to 12.

Enill told re­porters fol­low­ing the meet­ing Man­ning ad­vanced a plan of ac­tion for the fu­ture of the par­ty. Asked to clar­i­fy Man­ning's plan of ac­tion, Enill said he felt it would be ap­pro­pri­ate to make the de­tails avail­able to the par­ty's Gen­er­al Coun­cil be­fore mak­ing any pub­lic com­ment on it. He said the Gen­er­al Coun­cil is sched­uled to meet to­mor­row at 4 pm at Bal­isi­er House to dis­cuss the plan. Enill said the plan was pro­posed by Man­ning and mod­i­fied dur­ing yes­ter­day's dis­cus­sions. Asked if the par­ty mem­ber­ship was like­ly to ac­cept Man­ning's plan, Enill said he would an­swer that to­mor­row.

He said no de­ci­sion was tak­en to ei­ther ac­cept or re­ject the plan at yes­ter­day's meet­ing. "No, it's a Thurs­day is­sue." he said. Asked if the de­feat sig­nalled the end of the PNM, Enill said: "Of course not, the PNM is a very strong par­ty. It has strong in­sti­tu­tions in place. I think the par­tic­u­lar elec­tion ba­si­cal­ly re­volved around one man and what you see to­day is a re­flec­tion of that, rather than the re­flec­tion of the par­ty. That's the re­al­i­ty." Man­ning has led the PNM since 1987.