Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Days af­ter Stu­art Young was cho­sen as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's suc­ces­sor at a par­lia­men­tary re­treat in To­ba­go, he is now in lim­bo, as sev­er­al MPs who were in that cau­cus are said to now be re­fus­ing to en­dorse him on a doc­u­ment in­di­cat­ing he will have ma­jor­i­ty sup­port in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives when Row­ley even­tu­al­ly steps down.

Cab­i­net sources have told Guardian Me­dia that Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Camille Robin­son-Reg­is start­ed can­vass­ing MPs yes­ter­day to get their sig­na­tures for the doc­u­ment, which will be for­ward­ed to the Pres­i­dent even­tu­al­ly.

But sources said as Robin­son-Reg­is be­gan at­tempt­ing to phys­i­cal­ly ob­tain the sig­na­tures of the MPs who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the re­cent vote, she met some hur­dles.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that at least nine MPs have ini­tial­ly de­clined to reg­is­ter their sig­na­tures.

This, as a fall­out has de­vel­oped among MPs over the man­ner in which the vot­ing process went down and why it was nec­es­sary so soon in the first place.

Young, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West MP, edged out Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les 11-9 for the po­si­tion af­ter a se­cret bal­lot at the To­ba­go Plan­ta­tions on Mon­day.

Ac­cord­ing to chap­ter five of the Con­sti­tu­tion that deals with the ap­point­ment of min­is­ters, "Where there is oc­ca­sion for the ap­point­ment of a Prime Min­is­ter, the Pres­i­dent shall ap­point as Prime Min­is­ter: (a) a mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives who is the Leader in that House of that par­ty which com­mands the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of mem­bers of that House."

It is, there­fore, crit­i­cal that Young re­ceives the ma­jor­i­ty back­ing from as many MPs when the time comes for him to be in­stalled as the next Prime Min­is­ter.

The lack of sig­na­tures on the en­dorse­ment let­ter could now throw a wrench in the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion which Row­ley as­sured would be "smooth."

On the is­sue of why there is now con­tention af­ter Young won the straw vote on Mon­day, sources said MPs were ini­tial­ly un­der the im­pres­sion that Row­ley was go­ing to step away from both prime min­is­ter­ship and the par­ty leader po­si­tion soon­er rather than lat­er. As such, they were un­der the im­pres­sion that Young would have been in an in­ter­im prime min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion pend­ing a con­ven­tion to se­lect a po­lit­i­cal leader.

How­ev­er, "af­ter the vote, the cau­cus re­alised that Dr Row­ley was not go­ing to re­sign as po­lit­i­cal leader any­time soon and would stay on in that po­si­tion un­til the con­ven­tion, which is card­ed for in Sep­tem­ber."

Sources said they were al­so un­hap­py that some MPs were co­erced in­to go­ing in a par­tic­u­lar way dur­ing the vot­ing process with the promise of se­nior gov­ern­ment po­si­tions if the par­ty were re­turned to gov­ern­ment.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach out to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Robin­son-Reg­is on the al­leged con­cerns but there was no re­sponse up to press time.

Robin­son-Reg­is had in­di­cat­ed on Tues­day that there was no fric­tion or an­i­mos­i­ty with­in the PNM fol­low­ing the process which se­lect­ed Young as Dr Row­ley's suc­ces­sor. But ques­tions about a grow­ing di­vide with­in the par­ty have since sur­faced and in­ten­si­fied ahead of a meet­ing of Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Sat­ur­day.

Cru­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing

Mean­while, for­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford said he ex­pect­ed calls for clar­i­fi­ca­tion about the process used to se­lect Young and its trans­paren­cy at Sat­ur­day's meet­ing.

"There will be dis­cus­sions, clar­i­fi­ca­tions and, of course, there will be emo­tions giv­en the way com­ments are com­ing from peo­ple who are chal­leng­ing the process. There will be peo­ple like that and they will speak loud but that doesn't in­flu­ence the de­ci­sions in the par­ty. The per­sons who some­times make the loud nois­es are the peo­ple who some­times have an agen­da."

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ford al­so not­ed that it was not un­com­mon for tem­per­a­tures to rise over crit­i­cal mat­ters dur­ing Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ings.

"I hear a lot of peo­ple talk­ing about moral­i­ty and dif­fer­ent things, it is all spec­u­la­tion and there are el­e­ments in the me­dia try­ing to pro­mote these kinds of com­ments and try­ing to cre­ate di­vi­sion but we have a his­to­ry."

Fer­die Fer­reira, a PNM found­ing mem­ber, al­so said he ex­pects the par­ty's con­sti­tu­tion re­gard­ing the elec­tion of a suc­ces­sor to pre­vail on Sat­ur­day.

"What trig­gered all of this is all these unan­swered ques­tions and that is be­cause they did not fol­low the par­ty's con­sti­tu­tion. It is there and doc­u­ment­ed and there are prece­dents for this," Fer­reira said.

He re­peat­ed con­cerns that the re­sult of the vote was not unan­i­mous.

Mean­while, for­mer PNM Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, is of the view that Row­ley's hand could be bent when the ex­ec­u­tives meet.

"The point is that Dr Row­ley, at every stage of the game, by­passed the or­gans of the par­ty and I don't think that is ac­cept­able," Browne said.

For­mer Labour min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus al­so has her eyes set on Sat­ur­day's meet­ing.

"I am look­ing for­ward to ad­her­ence to the con­sti­tu­tion and re­spect of the con­sti­tu­tion of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment."

Ques­tions were sent to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings re­gard­ing the agen­da for the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing but there was no re­sponse up to news time.

Last year, the par­ty's in­ter­nal elec­tions and spe­cial con­ven­tion were post­poned. How­ev­er, when Row­ley an­nounced Young as his suc­ces­sor on Mon­day, he said the par­ty would hold a con­ven­tion in Sep­tem­ber to deal with the lead­er­ship is­sue.