It’s of­fi­cial, Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, who is now the coun­try’s Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, wants to be the next Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the Diego Mar­tin West seat.

Sources close to Browne yes­ter­day shared a let­ter with Guardian Me­dia, writ­ten by him, and ad­dressed to the PNM’s Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings which was a Con­sent for Nom­i­na­tion for the seat. 

On De­cem­ber 8, the Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive­ly re­port­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley would not be screened for the Diego Mar­tin West seat and that Browne had his bless­ing as a re­place­ment.

When the Guardian had reached out to Browne for the sto­ry be­fore pub­li­ca­tion he had said: “I will up­date you on this in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, at a time that I deem ap­pro­pri­ate. Be ful­ly as­sured that I re­main keen on con­tribut­ing to the fu­ture of our coun­try and the par­ty”.

Af­ter the sto­ry was pub­lished, Row­ley did not com­ment or ad­dress it.

Browne, on the oth­er hand, dis­missed it on so­cial me­dia with the fol­low­ing post: “I wish to cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that I have not been ap­proached by the Con­stituen­cy of Diego Mar­tin West with re­spect to nom­i­na­tion as an elec­toral can­di­date, and I have had no such con­ver­sa­tions or in­ten­tions or ‘bless­ings’. Any­thing pub­lished to sug­gest oth­er­wise is at best spec­u­la­tion or at worst the re­sult of pure and de­lib­er­ate MIS­CHIEF.”

How­ev­er, the sto­ry nev­er said or sug­gest­ed that he was ap­proached by the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy. He al­so fur­ther de­nied on so­cial me­dia that he was ap­proached on the sto­ry for com­ment. 

On Jan­u­ary 3, Row­ley con­firmed that he in­tend­ed to bow out of pol­i­tics af­ter 45 years and as such, the par­ty would have to seek a new can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin West. Row­ley has been MP for Diego Mar­tin West for the past 33 years. 

Three days lat­er on Jan­u­ary 6, at a press con­fer­ence in To­ba­go fol­low­ing his par­ty’s re­treat,  Row­ley was asked about the can­di­date to re­place him and whether it would be Browne but Row­ley said that the min­is­ter had ad­dressed it.

Five weeks lat­er, on Jan­u­ary 10, Browne wrote to Cum­mings and said he “here­by give my full and un­equiv­o­cal con­sent to be nom­i­nat­ed for con­sid­er­a­tion as the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Can­di­date for the Con­stituen­cy of Diego Mar­tin West, for the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tions in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“This de­ci­sion stems from my res­olute pa­tri­o­tism, un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ples and val­ues of our great par­ty, and my heart­felt fo­cus on the ad­vance­ment of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment,” the let­ter said.

The let­ter was copied to the chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin West Con­stituen­cy, Jack­ie Lazarus, and the Diego Mar­tin West par­ty groups. 

Browne con­tin­ued that he would ful­fil his du­ties “with in­tegri­ty, fair­ness, diplo­ma­cy, re­spect and re­lent­less hard work and ded­i­ca­tion” which are at­trib­ut­es that would make the con­stituents proud. 

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Browne told Guardian Me­dia that: “I did not share any such let­ter with the Guardian. But I shall re­vert to you lat­er this evening on the sub­stan­tive is­sue.” 

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin West Con­stituen­cy, Jack­ie Lazarus who said she had not yet re­ceived the let­ter. 

“I will await the re­ceipt from our for­mal chan­nels be­fore I com­ment,” she said. 

She said thus far, she has not re­ceived any nom­i­na­tion let­ters for the seat but that nom­i­na­tion for the seat clos­es on Jan­u­ary 28. 

Browne, a med­ical doc­tor, was first elect­ed as an MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral in 2007 and was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment in No­vem­ber of 2007. He served as an MP for eight years—three in Gov­ern­ment and five in Op­po­si­tion. In 2020, af­ter serv­ing as T&T’s am­bas­sador to Brazil, he was ap­point­ed to the Sen­ate and held his present port­fo­lio.

Last year, Browne made a slip dur­ing a con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate and when cor­rect­ed by the House Speak­er re­marked that he was not a fre­quent vis­i­tor to that House,  “but I once was, and who knows what the fu­ture holds.”

On Sat­ur­day, be­fore en­ter­ing the gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, Browne was asked by Guardian Me­dia if he was seek­ing nom­i­na­tions for any par­tic­u­lar seat in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

“I am not here to talk about that as yet. But in due course,” was Browne’s re­sponse.

Cum­mings did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia up to late last evening.