“I am fine! So hap­py for the en­quiry.”

The com­ment came from Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son yes­ter­day, hours af­ter she walked out of Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, re­fus­ing to talk to the re­porters about the 21 PNM MPs pledg­ing their sup­port for En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter.

Beck­les-Robin­son had shied away from an­swer­ing ques­tions about the out­come of Sat­ur­day’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing, led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

More than two dozen of Beck­les-Rob­sin­son’s con­stituents who came out to sup­port her at the PNM head­quar­ters left feel­ing dis­heart­ened af­ter Young re­ceived unan­i­mous sup­port.

Yes­ter­day, Beck­les-Robin­son said she was fine when Guardian Me­dia What­sApped her a list of ques­tions which she re­fused to re­spond to.

Her on­ly re­sponse was that she was fine and hap­py for the in­quiry.

How­ev­er, for­mer vice chair­man of the PNM Robert Le Hunte gave Beck­les-Robin­son words of en­cour­age­ment and in­spi­ra­tion, telling her not to give up.

“I think Pen­ny’s de­fla­tion and dis­ap­point­ment was al­ways sim­i­lar to mine....that this was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­low the mem­bers to make a de­ci­sion.”

He said when you feel strong­ly about such a process, you feel like you have dis­en­fran­chised the mem­ber­ship.

The for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter said Beck­les-Robin­son un­der­stood the im­por­tance of that.

“Pen­ny is a fan­tas­tic woman...a fan­tas­tic men­tor to women. She car­ries her­self in a very dig­ni­fied man­ner.”

Le Hunte, who was one of the many peo­ple out­side Bal­isi­er House await­ing the out­come of the meet­ing, said he saw the love and warmth Beck­les-Robin­son shared with her sup­port­ers.

He said young peo­ple can on­ly em­u­late Beck­les-Robin­son’s char­ac­ter­is­tics.

“A broad cross sec­tion of the peo­ple ad­mire that. So I would want to con­tin­ue for her to con­tin­ue in­to the pol­i­tics and to con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent her­self in the same man­ner be­cause...some­times when you are do­ing good you do not re­alise that peo­ple are look­ing to you and she is an in­spi­ra­tion.”

He said the process nev­er had any­thing to do with the can­di­date/s.

“Mr Young is a hard work­ing min­is­ter and a mem­ber of the PNM. He is free to as­pire to the high­est po­si­tion. I have al­ways main­tained that this is not about Young or Pen­ny ...it’s about the peo­ple.”

Le Hunte al­so made it clear the process had noth­ing to do with race.

The PNM has bro­ken the glass ceil­ing by sup­port­ing Young to re­place Row­ley when he demits of­fice. “Every­thing there is al­ways the first time. The PNM has al­ways por­trayed them­selves as a na­tion­al par­ty.”

Le Hunte said it was on­ly a mat­ter of time for some­one of non African de­scent to hold the high­est po­si­tion with­in the PNM.

“It might be sur­pris­ing ...it might be the first time. I think it was in­evitable at some point in time.”

The for­mer min­is­ter said the PNM is a dis­ci­plined par­ty and a new leader will give the coun­try a bet­ter chance at the polls.

All in all, Le Hunte feels the PNM could win the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.