Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Don’t give up hope!

That was the mes­sage to the pub­lic from Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, who will be­come the par­ty’s Op­po­si­tion leader, af­ter a unan­i­mous Gen­er­al Coun­cil de­ci­sion yes­ter­day.

And Beck­les-Robin­son says her pol­i­cy will not be one of ob­struct­ing and she will have no ob­jec­tion to meet­ing in­com­ing prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to find com­mon ground on is­sues.

For­mer par­ty leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, whose res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day will be­come ef­fec­tive to­day, has al­so said he lost Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion and not out­go­ing prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who al­so re­signed as chair­man yes­ter­day, as did Ro­han Sinanan as a deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

The post of leader will be filled with­in six months, ac­cord­ing to PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion, and will re­main va­cant un­til then.

Beck­les-Robin­son and Row­ley spoke in sep­a­rate in­ter­views last night at the PNM’s Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters, fol­low­ing the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil spe­cial ses­sion to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion af­ter Mon­day’s de­feat by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

The UNC won 26 of T&T’s 41 par­lia­men­tary seats, the PNM 13 and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty the two To­ba­go seats. The PNM, which pre­vi­ous­ly held 22 seats, lost sev­en in the East-West cor­ri­dor and deep south, as well as the two To­ba­go seats.

Last night, as the Gen­er­al Coun­cil end­ed, a num­ber of PN­Mites in red jer­seys gath­ered out­side Bal­isi­er House. The num­ber had grown from ear­li­er, when a group of Beck­les-Robin­son’s sup­port­ers had gath­ered in sup­port of her, chant­i­ng “Pen­ny, Pen­ny!”

The coun­cil’s meet­ing was at­tend­ed by suc­cess­ful PNM can­di­dates such as out­go­ing PM Young, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Colm Im­bert and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, as well as un­suc­cess­ful can­di­dates in­clud­ing Faris Al-Rawi, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Es­mond Forde, Roger Mon­roe, Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis and Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy.

Will­ing to meet
Kam­la on is­sues

Beck­les-Robin­son said she looked for­ward to be­ing the PNM’s first fe­male Op­po­si­tion Leader. She said she would first meet with PNM’s in­com­ing MPs and sen­a­tors to be ap­point­ed—the lat­ter to be fi­nalised—and there was an ex­pe­ri­enced team as well as young mem­bers.

She ac­knowl­edged there were great ex­pec­ta­tions since the PNM was mov­ing from 22 MPs to 13.

“It’s nine less. I’ve had the good for­tune of be­ing the leader of op­po­si­tion busi­ness in the Sen­ate with five oth­er col­leagues—Faris Al-Rawi, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Sham­fa Cud­joe, Fitzger­ald Hinds—it was a very pow­er­ful and suc­cess­ful team so I just want to say to my col­leagues, yes, we may have re­duced in num­ber but it shouldn’t in any way af­fect our abil­i­ty to be able to per­form ef­fec­tive­ly in the Par­lia­ment.”

She said her mes­sage to the peo­ple was, “On each and every oc­ca­sion the PNM had lost we have re­cov­ered, we’ve been re­silient ... it’s a ques­tion of if you be­lieve in the phi­los­o­phy of the PNM ... if you be­lieve you’ve had a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing ... so I’d say to them: you re­al­ly shouldn’t give up. There’s a good team in the Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, not just to rep­re­sent you there but to do the best we can as MPs in the con­stituen­cies we have.”

She said it was not the first time the PNM had lost in To­ba­go al­so.

“The par­ty was very dis­ap­point­ed but the PNM is a re­silient par­ty. But I’m pret­ty sure that in the short­est pos­si­ble time we’ll be back in gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Beck­les-Robin­son said she would not have a pol­i­cy of ob­struct­ing and in­tend­ed the PNM to be a re­spon­si­ble Op­po­si­tion. She not­ed the UNC in Op­po­si­tion had ob­ject­ed to sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion. She not­ed that she’d said on many oc­ca­sions in the Par­lia­ment that there should be rec­om­men­da­tions and if one didn’t agree, four or five hours shouldn’t be spent de­bat­ing, mi­nus do­ing amend­ments.

She said she would have no ob­jec­tion to meet­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar to find com­mon ground on is­sues. Beck­les-Robin­son said Row­ley had pro­posed such meet­ings and de­ceased PM Patrick Man­ning al­so did.

“As a re­spon­si­ble op­po­si­tion, cer­tain­ly if we be­lieve the need aris­es for us to meet with the prime min­is­ter on cer­tain ar­eas —yes. I will meet with the par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, get their views and as a team move for­ward.”

She said the Gov­ern­ment’s num­bers would give it pow­er to pass cer­tain types of (spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty vote) leg­is­la­tion with­out Op­po­si­tion sup­port but the Op­po­si­tion would still put for­ward amend­ments.

On the re­sults and dis­con­nec­tion from the pub­lic, Beck­les-Robin­son said tra­di­tion­al­ly, she got 9,000/10,000 votes but she recog­nised the pub­lic is now a “lot more hon­est” and they didn’t hes­i­tate to share with her some of their con­cerns why they didn’t vote. She said peo­ple were al­so lot more con­scious as vot­ers.

Asked if she would al­so be po­lit­i­cal leader, Beck­les-Robin­son said that was strict­ly in the purview of the par­ty lead­er­ship.

Lead­er­ship de­ci­sion
with­in 6 months

Ear­li­er, Row­ley ad­dressed the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing where cheer­ing was heard.

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, wear­ing a red PNM jer­sey, not­ed the res­ig­na­tion from Row­ley. He al­so con­firmed the res­ig­na­tion of Young from the chair­man­ship ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day, and Ro­han Sinanan from the deputy lead­er­ship ef­fec­tive to­day.

Cum­mings said the re­main­ing mem­bers of the lead­er­ship will meet soon and ad­vise what ac­tion will be tak­en on fill­ing the var­i­ous po­si­tions. Oth­er deputy lead­ers are Im­bert, To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis and Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly.

Cum­mings said the PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion says the post of leader must be filled with­in six months and there­fore the lead­er­ship will meet and re­turn to the coun­cil on a pro­pos­al for the time­frame and mech­a­nisms for the elec­tion.

There is no pro­vi­sion for an in­ter­im leader. He said mem­bers from T&T will vote via the one-man-one-vote sys­tem.

Cum­mings said the coun­cil con­sid­ered the mat­ter of the ap­point­ment of a Leader of the Op­po­si­tion aris­ing from the elec­tion’s re­sults, “and by unan­i­mous de­ci­sion, the coun­cil has agreed that the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who will fill the role of Leader of the Op­po­si­tion will be the MP for Ari­ma, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son.”

He said the rel­e­vant com­mu­nique will be sent to the Pres­i­dent and he ex­pect­ed all 13 PNM mem­bers elect­ed to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will sup­port Beck­les- Robin­son.

A doc­u­ment was cir­cu­lat­ed yes­ter­day sup­port­ing Beck­les-Robin­son for the post. It was signed by PNM can­di­dates who won their seats, Im­bert, Gon­za­les, Symon de No­bri­ga, Ka­reem Mar­celle and Kei­th Scot­land. Cum­mings said there will be an on­go­ing ex­er­cise to analyse the par­ty’s de­feat and how it moves for­ward.

3 key de­par­tures

Ahead of yes­ter­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, par­ty leader Row­ley an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion, stat­ing that he in­tend­ed to ad­dress the mat­ter at the meet­ing.

“This com­pletes my dis­en­gage­ment first­ly in the Gov­ern­ment (March 16, 2025) and fi­nal­ly, in the par­ty, (May 1, 2025). I of­fer my sin­cere thanks to all for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be of ser­vice in the var­i­ous of­fices. I ex­tend my best wish­es to the PNM and the na­tion. May Almighty God con­tin­ue to bless us all in the na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Row­ley said.

At 2 pm, out­go­ing PM Young, who was elect­ed chair­man in 2022, al­so is­sued a res­ig­na­tion state­ment on Face­book.

Young said, “Af­ter re­flec­tion yes­ter­day (Tues­day), I have to­day, ten­dered my res­ig­na­tion as chair­man of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.

“I thank my par­ty’s mem­ber­ship for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have served as chair­man from De­cem­ber 2022 to date. I give my com­mit­ment to con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate our cause and hold the op­po­si­tion to ac­count on be­half of my con­stituents, my par­ty and the cit­i­zens in the par­lia­ment as we move for­ward. In con­tin­ued ser­vice.”

Young’s let­ter to Cum­mings stat­ed it had been an ho­n­our and an in­valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence to be chair­man.

Out­go­ing deputy Leader Sinanan - who’d held the post for 15 years - yes­ter­day told re­porters, “If the po­lit­i­cal leader sent in a res­ig­na­tion let­ter and the po­lit­i­cal leader ap­point­ed me, in fol­low­ing what is a prin­ci­pled stand, I am sup­posed to send in my res­ig­na­tion right? So it’s a prin­ci­pled stand that’s all.”

Asked his thoughts on the elec­tion cam­paign, he said the coun­try has spo­ken.