The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) needs to ad­dress the is­sue of suc­ces­sion in a man­ner that rep­re­sents at­trac­tive­ness to the na­tion since its cur­rent cul­ture may not be ap­pro­pri­ate for the fu­ture. That view was ex­pressed yes­ter­day by out­go­ing chair­man Con­rad Enill. Per­form­ing his last du­ty at PNM's Port-of-Spain con­fer­ence, Enill paid trib­ute to for­mer par­ty leader Patrick Man­ning. Man­ning was ab­sent from yes­ter­day's func­tion, as was Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Colm Im­bert.

Enill not­ed that Man­ning had served as MP and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­tary, min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader, Prime Min­is­ter sev­er­al times and head of the Com­mon­wealth. Speak­ing to sus­tained ap­plause, Enill said: "It takes an ex­tra­or­di­nary in­di­vid­ual to ac­com­plish this long list in one life­time. I wish to place on record an ac­knowl­edge­ment of the con­tri­bu­tions of our past leader, Patrick Au­gus­tus Mervyn Man­ning." He said the par­ty will soon have an analy­sis of "why we are here to­day." He called for sup­port of Row­ley in re­build­ing and re­brand­ing PNM.