An­na-Lisa Paul

Dr Kei­th Row­ley is set to face some op­po­si­tion as he cam­paigns to hold on to the post of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader, fol­low­ing the shock an­nounce­ment by for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira that she will run for the post in the in­ter­nal elec­tion lat­er this year.

In con­firm­ing her in­ten­tion yes­ter­day, Nunez-Tesheira said al­though she has de­lib­er­ate­ly main­tained a low pro­file that has kept her out of the po­lit­i­cal lime­light for sev­er­al years, her loy­al­ty is for­ev­er vest­ed in the PNM.

This is why she said she can no longer ig­nore what is tak­ing place in terms of how the coun­try is be­ing man­aged, adding her de­ci­sion to con­test the lead­er­ship of the par­ty came af­ter she was ap­proached by oth­er PN­Mites to get back in­to the are­na.

The PNM’s in­ter­nal elec­tion is sched­uled for De­cem­ber 4.

Ex­plain­ing what had led to the de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, she sim­ply said, “The peo­ple want change.”

Nunez-Tesheira re­vealed, “I was ap­proached fair­ly se­ri­ous­ly and not just in terms of why don’t you go up, but it came with a very rare com­mit­ment and a plan mov­ing for­ward.”

She said the ap­proach by oth­er PN­Mites act­ed as an in­cen­tive to ce­ment her de­ci­sion on a lead­er­ship dri­ve.

How­ev­er, Nunez-Tesheira, who was a fi­nance min­is­ter from 2007-2010 un­der a then-Patrick Man­ning-run gov­ern­ment, said ap­pear­ing on talk shows and pub­lish­ing ar­ti­cles re­lat­ing to the so­cio-eco­nom­ic cli­mate in T&T over the past sev­er­al years al­so helped with the process, as she was forced to delve deep­er in­to the is­sues.

“It made me very well aware of how se­ri­ous our sit­u­a­tion was from my point of view and cer­tain­ly a lot of the cit­i­zens of this coun­try, that if some­thing was not done in re­la­tion to the lead­er­ship of the par­ty, that Trinidad was al­ready feel­ing a sense of hope­less­ness and I think that is where the tra­jec­to­ry was head­ing.”

Com­ment­ing on Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to run for a sec­ond term al­though he had ini­tial­ly said he would not, Nunez-Tesheira said this was, “con­sis­tent with why the PNM had lost a lot of the trust and con­fi­dence of the peo­ple.”

Re­call­ing just how many promis­es the PNM had made in the past which had not come to fruition, as well as the pub­lic mishaps and mis­steps, she said this, cou­pled with Row­ley’s lan­guage which had bor­dered on con­ceit and vul­gar­i­ty in some cas­es, did not in­spire sup­port.

Pressed to say just how suc­cess­ful her ef­fort may be, Nunez-Tesheira said she is not blind to the re­al­i­ties that ex­ist and there are peo­ple who will not want to come out and open­ly sup­port her.

“I do un­der­stand why mem­bers of his own Cab­i­net who prob­a­bly, if they had their way, would prob­a­bly say he shouldn’t be there…they don’t want to lose their job and I do un­der­stand that.”

She con­tin­ued, “I do un­der­stand peo­ple who are chair­men and di­rec­tors re­main­ing silent be­cause the price, as with any gov­ern­ment by the way, not just PNM, would be the loss of their po­si­tions and all that goes with it, so the fact of the mat­ter is that it is a chal­lenge.”

Con­fi­dent she can make a dif­fer­ence go­ing for­ward, she said she has no “co­coa in the sun or horse in the race” to wor­ry about, and hav­ing been test­ed in crit­i­cal and try­ing times in her pre­vi­ous dis­pen­sa­tion, she has the ex­pe­ri­ence to han­dle the job.

She said she was sad­dened that the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to suf­fer whilst the wealth was be­ing en­joyed by a se­lect group.

“Most of the coun­try liv­ing off of sub­si­dies, liv­ing on salaries that can­not mind them or their fam­i­lies and they don’t own one thing be­cause they are rent­ing, and this Gov­ern­ment has done very lit­tle to take them out of that…to make them en­tre­pre­neurs, to help them to con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try and buy from the same ten per cent so that every­body could get a share of the wealth of this coun­try, as a gov­ern­ment that Er­ic Williams fought so hard to start…this gov­ern­ment has be­trayed the very foun­da­tion of the PNM and what Er­ic Williams had fought for and it is a sad day for the PNM, but it is what it is and peo­ple know it.

“Peo­ple may not say it out­side but they are full of de­spair and hope­less­ness and they don’t think they have a choice but I am say­ing give me a chance to be your choice be­cause the leader, as we are see­ing, makes all the dif­fer­ence.”