Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal leader can­di­date Karen Nunez-Tesheira is seek­ing en­dorse­ment to re­build the “bro­ken” foun­da­tion of the par­ty.

Speak­ing dur­ing a cam­paign launch at the Point Fortin Sport­ing Com­plex on Mon­day night, the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter did not hold back in de­scrib­ing the state of the PNM. Say­ing the par­ty had a “bad” foun­da­tion, she com­pared it to the cur­rent poor state of the in­fra­struc­ture of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters.

“Not on­ly has it crum­bled, but it just has ac­tu­al­ly been oblit­er­at­ed, you know they broke it right down, it is gone. They must have known how bad the foun­da­tion was…It is in de­cline, it has been ne­glect­ed and we want to make sure that the par­ty and its lead­er­ship, which is why I am seek­ing the po­si­tion, stays true to the found­ing mem­ber, Dr Er­ic Williams,” she said.

Nunez-Tesheira said while her chil­dren did not want her to run for the po­si­tion, she has al­ways had a pas­sion for ser­vice and “do­ing the right thing” for the coun­try.

She said there is a “dis­con­nect” in the way the Gov­ern­ment now serves, leav­ing cit­i­zens alien­at­ed by their com­ments.

“We saw that re­cent­ly with the ‘bi­cy­cle,’ the ‘bread­fruit,’ ‘eat the mac­a­roni,’ ‘don’t eat the mac­a­roni,’ ‘don’t eat ham,’ ‘what you do­ing on the road eight o’clock in the night?’ You don’t speak to peo­ple like that. No, you don’t. You don’t dis­re­spect peo­ple like that,” Nunez-Tesheira said.

She crit­i­cised the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion for al­low­ing in­equal­i­ty to ex­ist with the treat­ment of peo­ple and in­cen­tives that do not ben­e­fit those who are in need.

“When we say the op­por­tu­ni­ty for all, that we mean it, and we don’t mean op­por­tu­ni­ty for all on sub­si­dies. We don’t mean op­por­tu­ni­ty for all and you work­ing in a fran­chise for next to noth­ing mon­ey,” she added.

PNM chair­man can­di­date Ken­neth Butch­er al­so spoke at the launch and crit­i­cised fel­low can­di­date Stu­art Young for not con­sid­er­ing what is best for the par­ty by adding to the mul­ti­ple min­is­te­r­i­al and ex­ec­u­tive port­fo­lios he al­ready has.

Both Butch­er and elec­tions of­fi­cer can­di­date, Bish­op Vic­to­ry Phillip, are col­lab­o­rat­ing with Nunez-Tesheira to se­cure a vic­to­ry in the in­ter­nal elec­tions, which will take place on No­vem­ber 26-27 and De­cem­ber 4.

“We have to en­sure that the fam­i­ly gets stronger, not weak­er, right? We have to get stronger. But you have to make it stronger in a way that every­body mat­ters,” Nunez-Tesheira said.