Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed be­lieves re­cent moves by San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning could sig­nal an at­tempt to force changes with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), while leav­ing open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a fu­ture lead­er­ship bid.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said Man­ning’s ac­tions should not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be in­ter­pret­ed as a di­rect at­tempt to be­come PNM leader, but ar­gued that the par­ty’s in­ter­nal struc­tures and process­es need to be ex­am­ined fol­low­ing its per­for­mance at the last gen­er­al elec­tion.

“You have to do self-as­sess­ment, re-as­sess­ment, and some re­flec­tion,” Mo­hammed said.

He said the par­ty must ex­am­ine what went wrong, how it hap­pened and who may have con­tributed to its prob­lems, while cor­rect­ing flaws in its struc­tures and process­es to re­build pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence.

Mo­hammed was re­spond­ing to a sug­ges­tion that Man­ning’s re­cent ac­tions rep­re­sent­ed a move to “lead or leave” the PNM.

“You’re not far-fetched in your as­sess­ment,” he said, while cau­tion­ing that want­i­ng to fix a par­ty does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean want­i­ng to lead it.

“There is po­ten­tial for lead­er­ship. If it hap­pens, it hap­pens. If it doesn’t hap­pen, it doesn’t hap­pen.”

Mo­hammed said Man­ning may be at­tempt­ing to di­rect at­ten­tion to­wards is­sues with­in the PNM that he be­lieves need to be ad­dressed.

He sug­gest­ed that there could al­so be an­oth­er of­fice­hold­er with­in the par­ty whose ac­tions are con­nect­ed to a pos­si­ble lead­er­ship bid, al­though he did not iden­ti­fy that per­son.

“I think there is an or­gan­ism in a per­son, an of­fice­hold­er some­where, that per­sons are not pay­ing at­ten­tion to, that has un­der­mined the par­ty in a man­ner in which, I think, that of­fice­hold­er might be lean­ing in the di­rec­tion of try­ing to cap­ture the lead­er­ship of the par­ty,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, the PNM’s in­ter­nal dif­fi­cul­ties are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as the par­ty ap­proach­es the midterm pe­ri­od of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment and pre­pares for lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

He said the PNM lead­er­ship should con­front those is­sues be­cause time is mov­ing to­wards the point when prepa­ra­tions will be­gin for the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Mo­hammed al­so ad­dressed con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Man­ning’s so­cial me­dia com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the MP’s dis­tanc­ing him­self from com­ments post­ed on his be­half.

He said politi­cians do not al­ways per­son­al­ly ad­min­is­ter their so­cial me­dia pages and that des­ig­nat­ed ad­min­is­tra­tors can some­times re­spond on their be­half.

How­ev­er, giv­en the height­ened ten­sions in San Fer­nan­do East, Mo­hammed said Man­ning need­ed to en­sure that all his com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels were tight­ly con­trolled.

“He’s in a sce­nario where every op­por­tu­ni­ty or any op­por­tu­ni­ty for sab­o­tag­ing him or mak­ing him look like a guilty par­ty will be tak­en,” Mo­hammed said.

Turn­ing to the sit­u­a­tion in the Siparia Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Mo­hammed de­scribed the re­cent walk­out by PNM coun­cil­lors as a “pow­er move” by the par­ty.

He said the cur­rent com­po­si­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion, fol­low­ing two UNC coun­cil­lors cross­ing the floor to the PNM and the death of an­oth­er UNC coun­cil­lor, had cre­at­ed an im­bal­ance that the PNM could use to its ad­van­tage.

Mo­hammed said the de­vel­op­ments would make the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant, es­pe­cial­ly in Siparia and San Fer­nan­do.

He ex­pects the UNC to re­tain the Ja­son Ali seat in Siparia, pro­vid­ed it fields a strong can­di­date and mounts an ef­fec­tive ground cam­paign.

He al­so said the par­ty should con­sid­er in­tro­duc­ing new faces in the Siparia cor­po­ra­tion to boost con­fi­dence among sup­port­ers.

Mo­hammed ex­pects the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions to be hot­ly con­test­ed, with vot­er turnout like­ly to be a key fac­tor in de­ter­min­ing how the seats are ul­ti­mate­ly di­vid­ed be­tween the par­ties.

He said the per­for­mance of both par­ties in key cor­po­ra­tions would be close­ly watched as the elec­tions un­fold.