AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

While the for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Dr Kei­th Row­ley, has tak­en all the blame for the par­ty’s elec­tion de­feat, for­mer PNM mem­ber Karen Nunez-Tesheira says out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young al­so bears sig­nif­i­cant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Her com­ments come a day af­ter Dr Row­ley sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion as po­lit­i­cal leader—ef­fec­tive to­day—and Young stepped down as par­ty chair­man with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Thurs­day, Nunez-Tesheira point­ed to Dr Row­ley’s "ar­ro­gant lead­er­ship de­ci­sions", which she be­lieves brought the par­ty to its knees on Mon­day.

She said it was Young who al­lowed him­self to be pushed in­to the prime min­is­te­r­i­al role with­out broad par­ty con­sen­sus, alien­at­ing par­ty loy­al­ists and vot­ers.

“I was in­side the PNM my­self. No­body could drag you in­to be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter. No­body could drag you in­to de­cid­ing that you would agree to be Prime Min­is­ter with­out tak­ing it to the par­ty for them to de­cide who they want­ed as the po­lit­i­cal leader,” Nunez-Tesheira said.

“No­body dragged you in­to tak­ing up the po­si­tion of prime min­is­ter when you very well knew that … you were not a pop­u­lar choice. And there­fore, there's a lot of di­vi­sion. It still has di­vi­sion right now, so that's very wor­ry­ing for me,” she added.

The for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter claims that Dr Row­ley had promised Young to fi­nanciers, with Young be­ing a will­ing par­tic­i­pant in these plans.

She main­tains, “He could just have said ‘No’.”

“I am pos­i­tive, if they had won, we would have seen that hubris and that ar­ro­gance and that out-of-touch, ‘let them eat cake’ at­ti­tude be­come even more and more en­trenched,” Nunez-Tesheira said. “Be­cause … they would [have said], 'You have known all our faults, the way that we have spo­ken to you, the way we have treat­ed with you—and yet you have vot­ed us back in.’ So, it's a good les­son.”

With Wednes­day’s unan­i­mous PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil de­ci­sion, mixed with pub­lic sup­port to ap­point Ari­ma MP Pene­lope Beck­les-Robin­son as Op­po­si­tion Leader, Nunez-Tesheira be­lieves that she will have some dif­fi­cul­ty as the par­ty at­tempts to re­build.

“She’s very easy-go­ing, very pleas­ant, very ac­com­mo­dat­ing, very wel­com­ing, and that's a breath of fresh air, in one sense,” the for­mer min­is­ter ob­served. “But we have to wait and see whether that trans­lates in­to the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties that are nec­es­sary.”

When asked if Beck­les-Robin­son has the ‘fire’ to lead in her new role, and hold the UNC-led gov­ern­ment ac­count­able, Nunez-Tesheira said:

“I don't know if they want steam and fire. I think we had enough steam and fire with Dr Row­ley. What you want is charis­ma. What you want is firm­ness. What you want to see is lead­er­ship. And it doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly have to trans­late in­to fire and brim­stone.”