Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son says some sec­tors of so­ci­ety no longer feel the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is a car­ing par­ty.

She made the com­ment as she an­swered crit­ics who crit­i­cised the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion loss to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and deemed as too “soft” to lead the op­po­si­tion bench.

A day af­ter be­ing ap­point­ed by the PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil to the po­si­tion, fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tions of po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and chair­man Stu­art Young from the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive, Beck­les-Robin­son vowed to lead a re­spon­si­ble Op­po­si­tion bench.

“I think what is crit­i­cal at this time is to be a lot more car­ing. A lot of is­sues that I have found in the pub­lic do­main is peo­ple feel­ing that the par­ty has not been suf­fi­cient­ly car­ing—that the par­ty is not knowl­edge­able about the is­sues,” she said dur­ing an in­ter­view on The Break­fast Show, a YouTube broad­cast.

She added, “My thing is deal­ing with is­sues of ser­vice. Some peo­ple ar­gue that they find you a lit­tle too soft and you are not suf­fi­cient­ly ag­gres­sive. Lead­er­ship is not on­ly about your­self, lead­er­ship is about a team.

“When it is nec­es­sary to be ag­gres­sive, I will be ag­gres­sive but at the end of the day it is what you de­liv­er to the pub­lic.”

Not­ing a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of votes the par­ty tra­di­tion­al­ly re­ceived, Beck­les-Robin­son called on the oth­er 12 elect­ed PNM mem­bers of par­lia­ment (MPs) to re­turn to the roots of ser­vice, adding, “That in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the MPs and the pub­lic—your ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty—I think what we need now is to be car­ing, to lis­ten a lot more, or at least give the im­pres­sion that you are lis­ten­ing be­cause some­times peo­ple just need to feel that you are lis­ten­ing ... That is one of the is­sues that im­pact­ed very neg­a­tive­ly on us.”

The Ari­ma MP said it has been a rough week for the PNM, af­ter it lost Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion 26-13 to the UNC. The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty took the two To­ba­go seats.

When asked whether for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young was giv­en suf­fi­cient time for the coun­try to get to know him as a leader, Beck­les-Robin­son said, “I don’t think he got enough time to be able to show his brand, to show his style of lead­er­ship be­cause he would have gone in­to an elec­tion al­most right away with­out peo­ple hav­ing the ben­e­fit to know ex­act­ly who he is, what is his vi­sion. Yes, he would have ar­tic­u­lat­ed it on the plat­form, but I don’t think it was suf­fi­cient.”

How­ev­er, she went fur­ther in say­ing, “The truth is, you had Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley there as well and Stu­art there as well, so in a sense, you had both of them at the same time, even though Dr Row­ley was the leader and Stu­art was the prime min­is­ter. The op­por­tu­ni­ty was not there for him (Young) to have a brand of his own style of lead­er­ship.”

Beck­les-Robin­son, who has been with the PNM for the last three decades, said she has a good re­la­tion­ship with Young and looks for­ward to de­vel­op­ing it fur­ther on the op­po­si­tion bench.

When ques­tioned on the lead­er­ship style she will bring to the Par­lia­ment, she ex­plained, “It’s all about hold­ing the gov­ern­ment ac­count­able but at the same en­sur­ing that you don’t take a po­si­tion where you’re go­ing to be ob­struc­tion­ist. I think the peo­ple of T&T de­serve bet­ter and re­al­ly can’t be busi­ness as usu­al where even be­fore the leg­is­la­tion comes to Par­lia­ment you say you are not go­ing to sup­port it. I main­tain my po­si­tion of be­ing a team and part of a cau­cus but al­so be­ing a re­spon­si­ble op­po­si­tion.”

She said peo­ple must un­der­stand that gov­er­nance is about both the op­po­si­tion and the gov­ern­ment, so there are times you are go­ing to have to en­gage with your col­leagues on the oth­er side of the aisle.

She al­so called for an end to hos­tile pol­i­tics, say­ing the peo­ple of this coun­try are tired of it.

The Op­po­si­tion leader said, “I have tried very hard to stay away from that lev­el of hos­til­i­ty be­cause I think the pub­lic is look­ing. The av­er­age cit­i­zen of T&T re­al­ly does not want hos­tile pol­i­tics—what they want you to do is de­liv­er. They want you to de­bate. They want you to hold the gov­ern­ment ac­count­able. At the end of the day, they want us to pass good leg­is­la­tion.”