Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford has ex­pressed deep con­cern over re­ports that San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning was shout­ed down and threat­ened dur­ing last Fri­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, com­par­ing the in­ci­dent to the treat­ment met­ed out to Man­ning’s fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, in 2010.

“It was shock­ing­ly re­vealed that Mr Bri­an Man­ning was de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak at last Fri­day’s coun­cil meet­ing. He was shout­ed down and threat­ened with hav­ing his mi­cro­phone mut­ed,” Ford said yes­ter­day in re­sponse to a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive on the is­sues sur­round­ing the mat­ter.

The spe­cial vir­tu­al meet­ing was con­vened to dis­cuss the find­ings of two re­ports stem­ming from an in­ter­nal probe in­to is­sues raised by Man­ning in June re­gard­ing the al­leged con­duct of for­mer San Fer­nan­do East chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is and cer­tain ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

Among the con­cerns raised by Man­ning were the al­leged im­prop­er hold­ing of a by-elec­tion for a con­stituen­cy post and a re­quest for ver­i­fi­ca­tion of par­ty groups. Pri­or to Man­ning’s com­plaint, Alex­is had lodged her own com­plaint al­leg­ing that Man­ning main­tained par­al­lel of­fi­cers with­in the con­stituen­cy.

Deputy leader Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus in­ves­ti­gat­ed both com­plaints, while Ernest Es­delle con­duct­ed the par­ty group ver­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.

The find­ings large­ly chal­lenged Man­ning’s claims. How­ev­er, the in­quiry re­port ac­knowl­edged that the by-elec­tion in ques­tion had been con­duct­ed ul­tra vires the PNM con­sti­tu­tion. The ver­i­fi­ca­tion re­port al­so ad­mit­ted sig­nif­i­cant de­fi­cien­cies were iden­ti­fied in San Fer­nan­do East’s record-keep­ing and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process­es, al­though it con­clud­ed there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to at­tribute de­lib­er­ate mis­con­duct to any in­di­vid­ual.

Man­ning sub­se­quent­ly wrote to gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, re­ject­ing most of the find­ings and re­quest­ing in­for­ma­tion on 11 par­ty groups re­moved from the con­stituen­cy, af­ter 15 were ini­tial­ly omit­ted and four lat­er ac­count­ed for.

Ford, a life­time PNM mem­ber, said he re­ceived “count­less calls” from Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­bers fol­low­ing the meet­ing.

“They ex­pressed hor­ror at the state to which the PNM has reached af­ter what they saw. They felt it was bul­ly­ing sim­i­lar to what was done to Mr Man­ning’s fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, af­ter the PNM’s gen­er­al elec­tion de­feat in May 2010,” Ford said.

“It is a shame­ful mem­o­ry for PN­Mites that Man­ning Sr was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly run out of Bal­isi­er House by cer­tain PN­Mites who are sit­ting Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­bers and are now on the PNM ex­ec­u­tive.”

Ford said the in­ci­dent marked “a sad and gloomy day” in the par­ty’s his­to­ry.

“Peo­ple felt the en­tire sit­u­a­tion last Fri­day was one-sided, de­signed to in­tim­i­date Mr Man­ning. Sup­port­ers are very con­cerned about the PNM’s fu­ture ex­is­tence,” Ford said.

“For­mer se­nior min­is­ters and par­ty of­fi­cials feel it is on the verge of a vir­tu­al crash. This is the con­clu­sion based on the re­port that emerged from the so-called in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Man­ning-Alex­is is­sue.”

Ford said he had re­viewed the re­ports and found flaws through­out.

“There were flaws in every as­pect. The so-called re­port claimed Mr Man­ning has lost sup­port in his con­stituen­cy based on the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults. But so too has the Op­po­si­tion Leader, as Ari­ma MP, suf­fered a de­cline in votes, as did many oth­ers.”

He said Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­bers were ques­tion­ing why the pre­sen­ta­tion fo­cused sole­ly on Man­ning and did not ad­dress al­le­ga­tions in­volv­ing Alex­is.

“But jus­tice must not on­ly be done, it must be seen to be done. Mem­bers want to know why the com­pre­hen­sive re­port was not giv­en to Mr Man­ning, but on­ly a sum­ma­ry, and then he was shout­ed down when he tried to speak,” Ford said.

Ad­dress­ing the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of cer­tain par­ty groups from par­tic­i­pat­ing in San Fer­nan­do East’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, Ford said some mem­bers be­lieve the de­ci­sion was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

“There’s a view that be­cause these groups were in Mr Man­ning’s cor­ner, they were barred from par­tic­i­pat­ing,” he said.

“To me, the par­ty has han­dled this mat­ter very bad­ly be­cause at least coun­cil mem­bers ought to have re­ceived a full re­port, start­ing with both sides’ com­plaints, and not in­for­ma­tion in bits and pieces.”

Ford al­so ac­cused the par­ty lead­er­ship of un­der­min­ing Man­ning.

“When a pub­lic meet­ing was held in Mara­bel­la, he was not among the speak­ers, nor was the May­or of San Fer­nan­do. That’s strange, giv­en that Mr Man­ning is the on­ly PNM rep­re­sen­ta­tive in that area.”

PNM leader Pen­ny Beck­les-Robin­son did not re­spond to queries yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the is­sues raised at the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing or al­le­ga­tions that Man­ning was bul­lied.

The PNM has giv­en par­ty groups in San Fer­nan­do East ap­proval to con­duct in­ter­nal elec­tions be­tween last Fri­day and Oc­to­ber 10 as part of the process to elect a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.