Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

A show of sol­i­dar­i­ty at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, last night. Whether it will hold up will be seen over the next 48 hours.

Fol­low­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters, a group of MPs from the par­lia­men­tary cau­cus emerged af­ter a sep­a­rate meet­ing—and re­cent lead­er­ship con­tenders Stu­art Young and Pen­ne­lope Beck­les em­braced, as did Young and PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings.

This, amid heavy spot­light on the PNM Gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing Mon­day’s an­nounce­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley that Young would be his suc­ces­sor as prime min­is­ter.

Af­ter last week­end’s Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus in To­ba­go, Row­ley re­vealed that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Young (PNM’s chair­man) had ob­tained the vote of 11 MPs to suc­ceed him (Row­ley) when he re­signs ahead. Plan­ning Min­is­ter Beck­les re­ceived the votes of nine MPs.

How­ev­er, some PN­Mites have tak­en is­sue with the se­lec­tion process, which they feel did not in­volve the gen­er­al par­ty mem­ber­ship and wasn’t in synch with democ­ra­cy. Sub­se­quent­ly, it was re­port­ed that the nine MPs re­fused to sign a let­ter of en­dorse­ment for Young to be­come prime min­is­ter, which would have been sent to the Pres­i­dent even­tu­al­ly.

The is­sues are set to be dis­cussed at the PNM’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing which was called by the lead­er­ship for to­mor­row.

But it was con­firmed that af­ter yes­ter­day’s Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, which was short, some mem­bers of the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus—such as Young and oth­ers—stayed back to have fur­ther dis­cus­sions.

Row­ley was at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day and re­port­ed­ly at­tend­ed a meet­ing of the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus. But he left Bal­isi­er House at 6.25 pm—look­ing se­ri­ous—and with­out tak­ing ques­tions from the me­dia.

At the end of the dis­cus­sions by the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus mem­bers, at 8.32 pm, that group of Min­is­ters and MPs emerged, Young at the cen­tre, Beck­les along­side and flanked by Cum­mings, Faris Al-Rawi, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, deputy leader Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Roger Munroe.

Asked about the meet­ing, Al-Rawi on­ly said, “All is good.”

There were then hand­shakes be­tween Young and Al-Rawi, hugs be­tween Young and Gads­by-Dol­ly, Young and Beck­les, Young and Deyals­ingh and hug/chest bump be­tween Young and Cum­mings.

Af­ter Young left, Guardian Me­dia asked Cum­mings about to­mor­row’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil agen­da, and a brief de­scrip­tion of what was ex­pect­ed.

Cum­mings replied, “Due process, PNM stan­dard—very pro­fes­sion­al.”

How­ev­er, oth­er par­ty of­fi­cials said the is­sue of the MPs’ let­ter of en­dorse­ment was not dis­cussed, nor were any of the mat­ters sur­round­ing the PM’s re­cent pro­nounce­ments on the lead­er­ship is­sues. These were all stood down to to­mor­row’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

Sources said there was, how­ev­er, doubt that an in­ter­nal elec­tion to se­lect a leader—as some have lob­bied for—would oc­cur, but rather a gen­er­al elec­tion. They did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a state­ment by the lead­er­ship, ahead of to­mor­row’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing.

Bap­tiste-Primus: Peo­ple’s con­cerns will be raised

Min­is­ters/PNM of­fi­cials had been at Bal­isi­er House since ear­ly in the af­ter­noon yes­ter­day. Thurs­day is usu­al­ly the Gov­ern­ment’s Cab­i­net day.

The Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing was sched­uled to be­gin at 5.30 pm. Some min­is­ters were still go­ing in around 6.15 pm. How­ev­er, a num­ber of min­is­ters left the com­pound, re­frain­ing from com­ment­ing on the meet­ing or ac­tiv­i­ties go­ing on in­side still, where min­is­ters from the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus re­mained in dis­cus­sion.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, Min­is­ter in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land and Sport Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis left at 6.27 pm. They de­clined com­ment, with Hinds telling re­porters, “Wish­ing you all the very best for the new year, hap­py new year and God bless you…”

They were fol­lowed by Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (PNM la­dy vice chair­man). Her ve­hi­cle met her at the door of Bal­isi­er House so me­dia couldn’t reach her for ques­tions.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga said he had no up­dates. As for when that was ex­pect­ed, he added, “That is not for me to say.”

Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, de­part­ing with Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, added, “We just fin­ished Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing and it was won­der­ful.”

Asked if the is­sues con­cern­ing Young and the lead­er­ship arose, Sinanan said, “Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive doesn’t deal with that…”

For­mer PNM deputy leader Joan Yuille-Williams said she had at­tend­ed the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing but not at­tend­ed the oth­er meet­ing (of min­is­ters in the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus).

Around 7.20 pm, Beck­les was seen be­ing hugged deeply by PNM’s labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus.

Bap­tiste-Primus emerged from the build­ing well be­fore the Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus min­is­ters did.

Asked about the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, Bap­tiste-Primus said, “It was a very con­struc­tive meet­ing—short.”

Asked if it met her sat­is­fac­tion, she replied, “Be­cause of the sub­jec­tive con­di­tions, one must al­ways be rea­son­able, and the leg­isla­tive (Par­lia­men­tary) cau­cus is still un­der­way so that would have im­pact­ed on our meet­ing. But it couldn’t, as it’s not yet at an end. So, it was agreed that what­ev­er is­sues and con­cerns will be raised at the Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Sat­ur­day (to­mor­row,) God’s will­ing.”

Asked what the coun­cil will be sug­gest­ing/propos­ing/dis­cussing/de­bat­ing, Bap­tiste-Primus said, “I can­not con­tem­plate what the Gen­er­al Coun­cil is like­ly to do but peo­ple have con­cerns and we’ll raise those con­cerns at Gen­er­al Coun­cil and I’m quite sure one way or the oth­er, a de­ci­sion would re­sult on Sat­ur­day.”

On the main con­cern of her­self or oth­ers in the par­ty on the cur­rent lead­er­ship mat­ter, Bap­tiste-Primus said, “(It’s) that who­ev­er leads the par­ty must be elect­ed by the mem­ber­ship through the one man/one vote sys­tem.”

A grin­ning Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, leav­ing at 7.19 pm, re­peat­ed­ly said, “I pre­fer not to say any­thing.” Im­bert al­so pre­ferred not to com­ment on the agen­da for to­mor­row’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing.

Ear­li­er in the evening when par­tic­i­pants ar­rived, To­ba­go PNM leader An­cil Den­nis and Works Min­is­ter Sinanan had dis­missed the per­cep­tion of in­sta­bil­i­ty in the PNM. Sinanan said the par­ty was as sta­ble as the Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters build­ing.