Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Poli­ical Re­porter

The lead­er­ship of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which has been re­duced by five of­fi­cers and now com­pris­es la­dy vice chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis, will be the team set­ting a time­frame for the par­ty to elect a new leader with­in six months.

The lead­er­ship struc­ture was re­duced by the res­ig­na­tions and re­movals of se­nior of­fi­cers on Wednes­day, af­ter Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion de­feat of the PNM by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

The UNC won 26 of TT’s 41 con­stituen­cies, the PNM 13 and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty two seats. Over­all, the 220,160 votes for the PNM was less than the 322,180 votes the par­ty won in the 2020 elec­tions.

Af­ter Wednes­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, Cum­mings an­nounced that the coun­cil had unan­i­mous­ly de­cid­ed on Pen­ny Beck­les-Robin­son as Op­po­si­tion Leader.

He al­so an­nounced that for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had re­signed as po­lit­i­cal leader, Stu­art Young had re­signed as chair­man and Ro­han Sinanan as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

Lat­er that night, in­for­ma­tion was cir­cu­lat­ed that the ap­point­ment of the two oth­er deputy lead­ers ap­point­ed by Row­ley, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Colm Im­bert, had been re­voked.

PNM of­fi­cials said that was in keep­ing with pro­to­col, since Row­ley had ap­point­ed them and was no longer leader. They said new deputy lead­ers will be ap­point­ed by the new po­lit­i­cal leader.

Leader of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil An­cil Den­nis said his ap­point­ment as deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil was not made by the po­lit­i­cal leader.

The cur­rent PNM ex­ec­u­tive was elect­ed in 2022. and its term end­ed last year but in­ter­nal elec­tions were put off due to the im­pend­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

At a me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day night, Row­ley said he was sure the par­ty would choose some­one who would be able to do the job of po­lit­i­cal leader.

Row­ley ad­dressed the Gen­er­al Coun­cil for about 45 min­utes and thanked mem­bers, ac­count­ed for his stew­ard­ship and al­so warned about the new gov­ern­ment keep­ing its promis­es.

Par­ty sources said labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus ex­pressed hap­pi­ness that the rel­e­vant process was be­ing fol­lowed in the wake of the elec­tion de­feat and spoke about how peo­ple’s lives were af­fect­ed by the PNM not be­ing in gov­ern­ment. Bap­tiste-Primus didn’t re­ply to queries about her views on the elec­tion out­come, re­fer­ring them to Beck­les-Robin­son.