DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) stal­wart Joan Yuille-Williams is deny­ing claims she was told not to at­tend the par­ty’s gen­er­al coun­cil or oth­er meet­ings at Bal­isi­er House.

It fol­lows PNM Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi dis­miss­ing ru­mours that as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pa­tri­cia Alex­is sent such in­struc­tions via text.

In a state­ment, the par­ty said no such mes­sage was sent, in­sist­ing Yuille-Williams re­mained a re­spect­ed mem­ber along­side oth­er long-stand­ing fig­ures.

“The pub­lic is ad­vised that no mes­sage of this na­ture was sent to Ms Yuille-Williams, who re­mains a val­ued and valu­able mem­ber of the par­ty, held in high es­teem, along with mem­bers of the ilk of Mar­i­lyn Gor­don, Orville Lon­don, Fer­die Fer­reira, and Overand Pad­more,” the state­ment said.

The PNM said it re­gret­ted any dis­tress caused, call­ing the ru­mour dam­ag­ing, and urg­ing those spread­ing it to con­sid­er the im­pact on some­one who has giv­en decades of ser­vice.

“That such dam­ag­ing and dis­tress­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion should have been pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic by those who should know it to be un­true is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern; how­ev­er, the PNM re­mains com­mit­ted to the high­est prin­ci­ples of op­er­a­tion, in line with our con­sti­tu­tion.”

How­ev­er, Yuille-Williams sug­gest­ed the ru­mour may have been the re­sult of a mis­un­der­stand­ing. She clar­i­fied that she would con­tin­ue to serve the PNM and at­tend meet­ings.

“Some­body prob­a­bly put out or was speak­ing to a dif­fer­ent group, and they put it out bad­ly,” she said.

“No, it is not true... I will be at­tend­ing all the meet­ings at BH (Bal­isi­er House) as usu­al. I am al­so Life Mem­ber No 4 and that al­so af­fords fur­ther priv­i­leges. BH con­tin­ues to be open to me. I en­joy ser­vice.”

Yuille-Williams joined the PNM in 1987, ac­cord­ing to for­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford. She has been a ded­i­cat­ed par­ty mem­ber ever since.

She served as Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture, and Women’s Af­fairs from 1992 to 1995 be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor from 1998 to 2001.

When the PNM re­turned to of­fice, she served as Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Gen­der Af­fairs from 2002 to 2003. The min­istry was then re­named, and Yuille-Williams served as Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture from 2003 to 2004 be­fore Gen­der Af­fairs was re­turned to the name from 2004 to 2007. She has al­so con­tributed to sport, name­ly net­ball, with the Skin­ner Park net­ball court be­ing named in her ho­n­our in No­vem­ber 2024.