KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter weeks of pub­lic dis­agree­ment over par­ty pro­ce­dures, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning says there is no love lost be­tween him and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les.

In Au­gust, Man­ning faced crit­i­cism from the par­ty lead­er­ship fol­low­ing a pub­lic dis­pute in­volv­ing his con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

At the time, Gon­za­les urged Man­ning to ex­er­cise re­straint while the par­ty sought to re­solve the is­sues in San Fer­nan­do East.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion was al­so raised af­ter Man­ning made bold claims ac­cus­ing the ex­ec­u­tive of not ad­dress­ing his con­cerns with ur­gency.

Asked where re­la­tions be­tween the two men stood now, Man­ning in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter ap­peared to have been set­tled and in­sist­ed that dis­agree­ments with­in the par­ty had not af­fect­ed its uni­ty.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Man­ning said, “There’s al­ways been love in the par­ty. I don’t know why you’re con­cerned. Why do you think there isn’t love in the PNM? We’ve had dis­agree­ments, but we are still uni­fied as a par­ty, and we have the same ob­jec­tive. We be­lieve that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is bad for democ­ra­cy, bad for Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we will do every­thing pos­si­ble to re­move them from of­fice.”

Both men greet­ed each oth­er with smiles and shook hands.