Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

In­ter­nal rum­blings with­in the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­tin­ue some five months af­ter the po­lit­i­cal par­ty has been vot­ed out of Gov­ern­ment. Un­able to put their house in or­der, the Sun­day Guardian was in­formed that the par­ty's an­nu­al con­ven­tion to be host­ed in No­vem­ber may be post­poned to Jan­u­ary next year. This comes on the heels of plans to in­tro­duce fa­cil­i­ta­tors to con­stituen­cies where there are no PNM MPs. A list of the fa­cil­i­ta­tors is ex­pect­ed to be re­leased this week. The sig­nif­i­cant dwin­dling of sup­port, ac­cord­ing to par­ty sources, has im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly and has re­sult­ed in sev­er­al par­ty groups be­ing un­able to meet spe­cif­ic dead­lines and re­quests.

A par­ty source re­vealed: "We are fac­ing a se­ri­ous prob­lem get­ting par­ty groups to­geth­er. Our sup­port is van­ish­ing overnight. The PNM con­ven­tion is nor­mal­ly held in No­vem­ber but we are prac­ti­cal­ly scram­bling to pro­vide a list­ing for nom­i­na­tion. We have to deal with poor sup­port and ten­sion in the ranks, so we are look­ing at mid Jan­u­ary for our con­ven­tion be­cause of all the out­stand­ing is­sues to be set­tled." Sup­port­ers, sources said, have be­come very dis­in­ter­est­ed. "We have 28 par­ty groups and so far in­for­ma­tion has not been forth­com­ing as to when the in­ter­nal elec­tions will be held.

There is slug­gish­ness in the sys­tem right now. Five months af­ter and there has been no change. "Things are be­ing done in haste and we all know hur­ry birds do not build good nests. The fo­cus should be on look­ing at how the par­ty op­er­ates rather than deal­ing with the is­sues as to why we failed," one source said. "We need to move away from elec­toral is­sues be­cause we would not be fac­ing the polls any time soon," an­oth­er source lament­ed. But the unan­swered ques­tions on the lips of many is why the PNM can­not seem to reengi­neer it­self even af­ter for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader, Patrick Man­ning has bowed out?

Se­nior mem­bers op­pos­ing Row­ley

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that Dr Kei­th Row­ley's lead­er­ship is be­ing met with "stiff op­po­si­tion" by some se­nior mem­bers. "The truth and fact is some served with Man­ning and some would have been se­lect­ed by him for spe­cif­ic rea­sons, so there is a trust fac­tor fac­ing the par­ty," a par­ty source said. "One has to re­mem­ber Row­ley was thrown out of the Cab­i­net and was in the wilder­ness for a num­ber of years. He has to earn back that trust and so far he has not done that. Row­ley was out of the in­ner cir­cle and sud­den­ly he is the leader of the par­ty; the per­son who is be­ing trust­ed to take the par­ty back in gov­ern­ment. While at first for many he was the most 'pop­u­lar' per­son to take over, many are think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly now and are afraid to say any­thing."

On the oth­er hand, par­ty in­sid­ers re­vealed that while some mem­bers are against some of the de­ci­sions be­ing made by Row­ley, they are us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to even their score with Man­ning. "What we have no­ticed is sev­er­al per­sons Man­ning re­ject­ed are the very same per­sons meet­ing with con­stituents. Do these peo­ple re­al­ly care about the way for­ward or their own in­ter­ests? "Many of them have a vendet­ta against Man­ning be­cause of the treat­ment they re­ceived," a par­ty in­sid­er said. "It is no se­cret that Man­ning heaped scorn on some of his sup­port­ers; some for good rea­son while some of his de­ci­sions were made in poor and bad taste based on ad­vice. But when you look at the ten­sion now in the par­ty you won­der if peo­ple re­al­ly want the PNM to re­turn to of­fice," a con­cerned par­ty mem­ber added.

Man­ning has opt­ed to stay silent to be free from any blame and to have the last laugh, an in­sid­er said. "Man­ning has re­mained very silent ex­cept for pub­licly stat­ing that he en­dors­es the new lead­er­ship of the par­ty. Peo­ple must not for­get he is an ex­pe­ri­enced politi­cian. He did not have to call a gen­er­al elec­tion, but as we all know he went against the ad­vice of many be­cause of his ar­ro­gance. "He knew the elec­torate was ag­i­tat­ed and de­cid­ed to throw in his hat wil­ful­ly. Quite frankly, he al­lowed the peo­ple to chose with­out say­ing any­thing. With­out speak­ing he said you want­ed a coali­tion gov­ern­ment, you want­ed Dr Row­ley to lead the PNM take him. "But are the sup­port­ers hap­py?" a se­nior par­ty mem­ber added.

East In­di­an fac­tor cru­cial

An­oth­er cru­cial fac­tor af­fect­ing the par­ty, the Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands, is that Row­ley is fail­ing to woo East In­di­ans to the par­ty. "It has al­ways been a dif­fi­cult area but we were able to win some sup­port. The odds are now high again giv­en that al­most all of our sup­port has shift­ed to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. The truth is over­all we have a tough strug­gle on our hands that we may not be con­quer­ing any time soon." At­tempts to con­tact Row­ley proved fu­tile up to late yes­ter­day. A mes­sage left on his cell phone was al­so not an­swered.