Po­lit­i­cal leader-elect of the PNM, Pene­lope Beck­les, told sup­port­ers in To­ba­go on Tues­day night that she un­der­stands the pain mem­bers are feel­ing and pledged to lead dif­fer­ent­ly if elect­ed.

Speak­ing at the One PNM team meet­ing in Buc­coo, she said, “In Trinidad plen­ty hurt­ing, and there’s more hurt­ing in To­ba­go. I mean, some Trinida­di­ans mightn’t be too hap­py to hear me say that, but when you have lost your both mem­bers of par­lia­ment and you on­ly have one per­son in the as­sem­bly, that ain’t easy. So I un­der­stand the pain and the hurt that many of you all feel.”

Beck­les, the po­lit­i­cal leader-elect, de­scribed her lead­er­ship style as one root­ed in lis­ten­ing, not ag­gres­sion.

“You know, you hear some say­ing, I ain’t loud enough, I ain’t ag­gres­sive enough, I ain’t talk­ing enough. She too soft. There’s a lot of wis­dom in lis­ten­ing, and some lis­ten­ers don’t al­ways speak very quick­ly, and I’m one of those who do a lot of lis­ten­ing. So yes, you might not find I’m ag­gres­sive, but all of you know in here… the most pow­er­ful method of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is si­lence.”

She said re­build­ing the par­ty must in­volve a new ap­proach. “That is why I’m say­ing that you may have some things you want to ask me or tell me, be­cause I am go­ing to be do­ing things dif­fer­ent­ly, and it would not be busi­ness as usu­al.”

The po­lit­i­cal leader-elect al­so said elect­ed par­ty of­fi­cers would be ex­pect­ed to present a clear plan short­ly af­ter tak­ing of­fice.

“I have made it very clear that there’s a gen­er­al coun­cil, and when the of­fi­cers come in the first three months, they have to present their plan for the next two years, and they heard it from me loud and clear.”

She promised a stronger re­la­tion­ship be­tween the par­ty's lead­er­ship in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with more meet­ings to be held in To­ba­go.

“One of the things that we have to work on is the im­prove­ment be­tween the To­ba­go Coun­cil and the Trinidad lead­er­ship… un­der my watch, it will be yes, and the gen­er­al coun­cil needs to come to To­ba­go more of­ten. So it can’t be that every­thing is in that way, and we not com­ing up here.”

She urged the par­ty to ac­knowl­edge its past mis­takes and fo­cus on uni­ty.

“If you don’t ac­cept that you made mis­takes, then you can­not re­cov­er.”

Beck­les re­mind­ed sup­port­ers of the par­ty’s re­silience, say­ing, “If you chop it, it will grow back, and if you burn it, it will grow back. That is the re­silience of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.”