KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

While San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has pub­licly aired his griev­ances with his con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), his moth­er, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning, is tak­ing a marked­ly dif­fer­ent ap­proach.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia for com­ment on the deep­en­ing dis­pute with­in the con­stituen­cy and the rep­ri­mand her son re­ceived from par­ty of­fi­cials on Mon­day, Mrs Man­ning re­mained tight-lipped.

Re­spond­ing to all ques­tions posed by Guardian Me­dia, she said she had noth­ing to say "just yet."

Her si­lence comes days af­ter she sig­nalled a re­turn to ac­tive pol­i­tics by of­fer­ing her­self for the po­si­tion of chair­man of the PNM's San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

Her late hus­band, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, rep­re­sent­ed San Fer­nan­do East for more than four decades be­fore their son Bri­an won the seat in 2020 and suc­cess­ful­ly re­tained it in 2025.

Yes­ter­day, the en­tire con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive re­signed, in­clud­ing chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is, who has been at the cen­tre of sev­er­al cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions raised pub­licly by MP Man­ning.

Alex­is has al­so an­nounced that she will not seek re-elec­tion as chair­man of the ex­ec­u­tive.

In a state­ment, the ex­ec­u­tive said its res­ig­na­tion was in­tend­ed to fa­cil­i­tate an or­der­ly tran­si­tion, al­low in­ter­im arrange­ments to be im­ple­ment­ed and pave the way for the elec­tion of a new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

The res­ig­na­tions clear the path for a new ex­ec­u­tive to be elect­ed, with Mrs Man­ning hav­ing al­ready sig­nalled her in­ten­tion to be part of the con­stituen­cy's next lead­er­ship team..