Richard Lord

Long-stand­ing mem­ber of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment(PNM) Ed­die Hart says he re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to the 54-year-old par­ty and its new po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Hart said that in re­sponse to yes­ter­day's front page sto­ry in the Ex­press which claimed that he had left the par­ty and was about to join the new Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"It's to­tal­ly un­true," Hart said when ques­tioned by the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. "I am not hap­py at this time, not hap­py at all. No­body spoke to me. I have friends in the PP, Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) but no one spoke to me. The sto­ry re­mains shock­ing to me." Hart said the Ex­press sto­ry had done "un­told dam­age to me and at this time I am weigh­ing my op­tions on what ac­tion I can take as re­sult."

The for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter said he was "still in shock.

"I am try­ing to un­der­stand how my pic­ture and such a fic­ti­tious sto­ry could have ap­peared on the front page of the news­pa­per," he said. "I re­main a loy­al mem­ber of the PNM...I have al­ways been and will al­ways be. "I am a sup­port­er of Dr Row­ley. I am proud that he is now the leader of the par­ty. I know he has a tall or­der to re­turn the par­ty to gov­ern­ment, but I ful­ly sup­port him." On the eve of the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, Hart vowed to re­main with the PNM. He told a meet­ing in the St Joseph con­stituen­cy that he could nev­er be bought.

Hart again stressed that yes­ter­day, say­ing he "re­mained to­tal­ly com­mit­ted to the PNM's cause...I have not joined the PP or crossed the floor." Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er told re­porters on Mon­day that he would drop a bomb­shell dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing of the PP in Tu­na­puna last night. He said a PNM mem­ber was ex­pect­ed to join the PP plat­form for that meet­ing.