Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ex­tend­ed New Year greet­ings to cit­i­zens at home and abroad, de­scrib­ing the start of the year as a shared mo­ment of re­flec­tion and hope.

She ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges faced in 2025, in­clud­ing the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, strug­gling small busi­ness­es, and per­sis­tent crime and in­se­cu­ri­ty.

She said these re­al­i­ties re­quired re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship, clear vi­sion and a re­newed com­mit­ment to the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

Beck­les re­flect­ed on her ap­point­ment in 2025 as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, not­ing that she was the first woman to hold the post. She said those roles car­ried a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ad­vo­cate for cit­i­zens and to hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count.

She said the PNM’s fo­cus in 2026 would be prepa­ra­tion and re­new­al, in­clud­ing strength­en­ing its pol­i­cy frame­work, re­new­ing lead­er­ship struc­tures and prepar­ing to gov­ern re­spon­si­bly when called up­on. She said the par­ty aimed to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence in gov­ern­ment and en­sure na­tion­al re­sources were man­aged in the best in­ter­est of all cit­i­zens.