Gail Alexan­der

A mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, re­port­ed to be brew­ing with­in the par­ty in re­cent days, nev­er made it to dis­cus­sion lev­el of yes­ter­day's PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil which in­stead unan­i­mous­ly sup­port­ed Row­ley. Talk on the re­port­ed no-con­fi­dence move on Row­ley–PNM's leader for four months–has swept the PNM since last week­end. The is­sue in the Op­po­si­tion PNM comes a day af­ter yes­ter­day's ex­clu­sive Guardian re­port about fric­tion in the rul­ing Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion. The no-con­fi­dence move was re­port­ed to have been ex­pect­ed at yes­ter­day's coun­cil meet­ing in the form of a mo­tion. All of yes­ter­day, the is­sue was a hot top­ic on the PNM "ground," with calls from con­stituen­cies be­ing trad­ed back and forth on the mat­ter. The PNM's gen­er­al coun­cil met at the Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, ahead of a re­treat be­ing held by the PNM this week­end to plan the way for­ward and re­view sys­tems. Just af­ter yes­ter­day's coun­cil be­gan at 5.30 pm, a hand­ful of Row­ley's sup­port­ers in red T-shirts from Arou­ca/Mal­oney and al­so from Care­nage, came to Bal­isi­er House to sup­port the par­ty leader.

When asked why they had come, one woman said: "We heard that this was go­ing to be a very im­por­tant meet­ing and big things were go­ing to take place at the gen­er­al coun­cil so we come to sup­port Dr Row­ley." Speak­ing at a me­dia brief­ing af­ter the three-hour coun­cil, Row­ley said he was aware of the ru­mour that had been mak­ing the rounds in the last two days. Row­ley, how­ev­er, said a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence against him was not raised at the coun­cil. "To the ex­tent that this (ru­moured mo­tion) was be­ing said by any per­son, such per­sons did not bring it to the coun­cil," he said. "I treat­ed it as a ru­mour but there were very strong ru­mours that that was go­ing to hap­pen. But it did not man­i­fest it­self in any re­al­i­ty." He said the me­dia might have been at­tract­ed to yes­ter­day's coun­cil since re­porters might have heard the ru­mour that there were at­tempts to make changes in the PNM's po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. "Those ru­mours at­tract­ed some live­ly de­bate in the coun­cil and as po­lit­i­cal leader, I'm pleased to re­port that the coun­cil in all its sub-units, in­clud­ing the Women's League, re­sound­ing­ly en­dorsed the de­ci­sions tak­en by the par­ty con­ven­tion in June to elect and sup­port me as po­lit­i­cal leader," Row­ley said.

"Con­trary to what was said in the ru­mours of Tues­day and yes­ter­day–that per­sons would have been mak­ing cer­tain po­si­tions avail­able to the coun­cil for ad­ju­di­ca­tion–no such thing hap­pened. "What hap­pened is that peo­ple heard that such things might have hap­pened and ex­pressed them­selves on be­half of their con­stituen­cies and on be­half of their Women's League and on their per­son­al be­half...And such ru­mours have no foun­da­tion. "We do know there might be some peo­ple who might not be en­am­oured that I am po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM, but the re­sound­ing view of the coun­cil in the pres­ence of any such per­son–so far as they ex­ist–was that the ru­mour has no trac­tion to get in this par­ty at this time. "I feel very for­ti­fied by the sup­port that I know I have in the PNM and was ex­pressed this evening in re­sponse to these ru­mours," he added. "The coun­cil rep­re­sents PN­Mites from all over T&T and they, too, would have heard those ru­mours and they ad­dressed the ru­mours by ex­press­ing their po­si­tion. "So ru­mours were con­front­ed with re­al­i­ty." Row­ley said he did not know where the ru­mour start­ed or where it came from. But, he added: "It may be the view or ex­pres­sion of some per­son known or un­known." He said neg­a­tive views were in the small mi­nor­i­ty and were not aired at yes­ter­day's coun­cil. He said the coun­cil was "over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ive" of his ef­forts at lead­er­ship.

PNM sources said a large num­ber of sup­port­ers of Row­ley, in­clud­ing some MPs, made loud com­ments dur­ing the coun­cil meet­ing in sup­port of Row­ley, warn­ing rhetor­i­cal­ly that peo­ple should not "touch their leader." Rounds of ap­plause could be heard dur­ing the meet­ing. Some top-lev­el PN­Mites left the meet­ing be­fore it was com­plet­ed. Row­ley said it was one of the "liveli­est, most stim­u­lat­ing" gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ings he had ever at­tend­ed. More than 80 coun­cil mem­bers at­tend­ed. PNM's coun­cil com­pris­es 160 mem­bers. Al­most all PNM MPs, save for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning, were present. Man­ning's San Fer­nan­do East chair­man Tina Gron­lund-Nunez at­tend­ed. Var­i­ous sen­a­tors ap­point­ed by Row­ley were all present. This week­end's re­treat will dis­cuss the re­port of a 15-mem­ber team which has sur­veyed PNM units in re­cent weeks with a view to re­struc­tur­ing the par­ty. The re­treat will al­so deal with an ef­fec­tive Op­po­si­tion. Row­ley said there was a view by some that the PNM was not "fir­ing on all cylin­ders." He said this was not un­usu­al since some had re­act­ed to change in the par­ty dif­fer­ent­ly. The PNM will hold con­stituen­cy elec­tions in No­vem­ber, in ad­vance of its an­nu­al con­ven­tion in Jan­u­ary where a new PNM ex­ec­u­tive will be elect­ed. Row­ley' s term as leader is for five years–from June 2010 to 2015.