Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ari­ma Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says her com­mit­ment is to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

She made the com­ment yes­ter­day, as she broke her si­lence for the first time since she lost a vote to Stu­art Young to be the suc­ces­sor to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley when he steps down.

“My com­mit­ment is to the par­ty, loy­al­ty to the par­ty,” she said while speak­ing at the in­au­gur­al open­ing of the Non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases Pre­ven­tion & Re­treat Cen­tre in Blan­chisseuse.

The man­ner in which Young was cho­sen dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary cau­cus in To­ba­go has brought some dis­cord with­in the par­ty, with many of the be­lief that Dr Row­ley should have let the mem­ber­ship de­cide on his suc­ces­sor.

Dur­ing an ex­ec­u­tive coun­cil meet­ing on Thurs­day at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, how­ev­er, MPs ap­peared to have closed ranks and Beck­les and Young hugged each oth­er out­side the venue af­ter a meet­ing at which they at­tempt­ed to re­solve their is­sues.

And to­day, both the cau­cus vote on the prime min­is­ter­ship and the lead­er­ship of the par­ty are ex­pect­ed to be high on the agen­da at a gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House.

Asked about the vote process dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, where Young won by a nar­row 11-9 mar­gin, Beck­les said, “We un­der­stand that you know, things like that hap­pen. The crit­i­cal thing is that as some­body who has served for a very long time, I start­ed off in lo­cal gov­ern­ment, and for me, the par­ty al­ways comes first.”

On how she felt about be­ing by­passed for the prime min­is­ter­ship, in light of the fact that her con­stituents were up­set about the de­ci­sion, she said, “I chal­lenged the lead­er­ship be­fore, I got the op­por­tu­ni­ty again to serve in the cab­i­net ... I think there is ab­solute­ly no rea­son for any­body to be sad.”

There was spec­u­la­tion among the pop­u­la­tion over which MPs vot­ed for Young and Beck­les. A list that was cir­cu­lat­ing on­line al­leged­ly showed how each mem­ber vot­ed was deemed in­ac­cu­rate by the Prime Min­is­ter and his MPs.

How­ev­er, fears of a di­vi­sion in the par­ty over the vot­ing process widened when MPs re­fused to sign an en­dorse­ment let­ter on Young’s be­half, which was in­tend­ed to be tak­en to the Pres­i­dent when Row­ley steps down.

This, the prime min­is­ter­ship choice and the PM’s de­ci­sion to stay on as po­lit­i­cal leader and de­lay the con­ven­tion un­til Sep­tem­ber, will be crit­i­cal is­sues ad­dressed at to­day’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing. But Beck­les did not want to spec­u­late on the meet­ing’s agen­da.

“I can’t say what will hap­pen to­mor­row (to­day), but the im­por­tant thing is that as a par­ty, ... you know the fo­cus is on main­tain­ing ... the par­ty, a par­ty that is more than 60 years old ... It’s not any­thing un­usu­al, it’s min­is­ter Young and my­self,” she stat­ed.

In May 2014, Beck­les un­suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged Dr Row­ley for the lead­er­ship of the PNM. Dr Row­ley re­ceived 18,070 votes com­pared to Beck­les’ 1,314. She was sub­se­quent­ly re­ject­ed as a can­di­date for the Ari­ma con­stituen­cy in the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and her re­place­ment, An­tho­ny Gar­cia, won the seat for the par­ty. How­ev­er, Beck­les was giv­en the chance to re­turn as an MP for Ari­ma in 2020, won the seat and now sits as Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter in Row­ley’s Cab­i­net.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh gave his sup­port to Beck­les while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the event.

“Pen­ny and I go back a long way,” he said.

But when asked af­ter­wards about any ten­sion in the PNM, Deyals­ingh said the par­ty re­mains uni­fied and what hap­pened on Mon­day in To­ba­go and on Thurs­day show­cased the democ­ra­cy in the par­ty.

The Health Min­is­ter said the di­a­logue go­ing on with­in the par­ty is good and that he has no doubt the PNM will re­main unit­ed re­gard­less of the di­a­logue com­ing out of to­day’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing.

“We will all be unit­ed in keep­ing this coun­try along the pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry it has been on for the last nine years ... There’s is no war, this is pol­i­tics, we are big peo­ple mak­ing se­ri­ous de­ci­sions,” he said.