DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

A po­lit­i­cal leader for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment will be elect­ed at the end of June, when the par­ty con­ducts its in­ter­nal elec­tions.

The de­ci­sion was reached dur­ing an ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing held yes­ter­day at Bal­isi­er House.

The in­ter­nal elec­tion will be al­most two months af­ter the par­ty’s de­feat in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, where the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) se­cured a ma­jor­i­ty of 26 seats, ef­fec­tive­ly dis­plac­ing the PNM, which man­aged to win 13. The re­main­ing two seats were claimed by the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty.

In a state­ment is­sued by PNM chair­man Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, it was con­firmed that all po­si­tions with­in the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive will be open for con­test. The in­ter­nal vote will be con­duct­ed us­ing the par­ty’s “one man, one vote” sys­tem, al­low­ing broad par­tic­i­pa­tion among par­ty mem­bers.

Al­though a firm date for the elec­tion has not yet been set, the par­ty’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil is ex­pect­ed to fi­nalise the time­line in the com­ing days. The coun­cil will al­so be re­spon­si­ble for ap­point­ing an elec­tion su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee, which will over­see the in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy of the process.

Un­der the PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion, lead­er­ship elec­tions are man­dat­ed every four years. The last such elec­tion oc­curred in De­cem­ber 2022, set­ting the next cy­cle for 2026. How­ev­er, re­cent de­vel­op­ments have al­tered the ex­pect­ed time­line.

In No­vem­ber 2024, the par­ty post­poned its 51st an­nu­al con­ven­tion and lead­er­ship elec­tions, which had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled for No­vem­ber 17 of that year. Gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings not­ed that the po­lit­i­cal leader held the au­thor­i­ty to resched­ule the con­ven­tion, a de­ci­sion lat­er en­dorsed by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil. As of now, no new date has been of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced.

Lead­er­ship reshuf­fles

af­ter elec­tion de­feat

Just two days af­ter suf­fer­ing a sig­nif­i­cant loss in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, top of­fi­cials of the PNM ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions. On April 30, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley pub­licly dis­closed his in­ten­tion to step down as po­lit­i­cal leader, ef­fec­tive May 1, along with Stu­art Young and Ro­han Sinanan, who re­signed as chair­man and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader, im­me­di­ate­ly that day.

Their de­par­tures came ahead of a spe­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing that same day. Be­fore the meet­ing, par­ty mem­bers had pub­licly called for Row­ley to step aside fol­low­ing the PNM’s elec­toral de­feat. Row­ley took the blame for the par­ty’s loss. No­tably, Row­ley’s lead­er­ship term was orig­i­nal­ly set to con­clude in No­vem­ber 2026.

In one of his fi­nal ac­tions as po­lit­i­cal leader, Row­ley al­so re­scind­ed the ap­point­ments of two deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers—Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and Colm Im­bert.

At that point, on­ly three fig­ures re­mained in their po­si­tions: To­ba­go Coun­cil leader An­cil Den­nis, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Cum­mings and la­dy vice chair Camille Robin­son-Reg­is. Un­like oth­er deputy lead­ers, Den­nis holds his po­si­tion by virtue of lead­ing the PNM’s To­ba­go arm, which au­to­mat­i­cal­ly con­fers the ti­tle of deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

A spe­cial ses­sion of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil was con­vened on May 6, where Gads­by-Dol­ly and Im­bert were vot­ed in as chair­man and vice chair­man re­spec­tive­ly. These ap­point­ments are tem­po­rary and will re­main in place un­til the par­ty con­ducts its in­ter­nal elec­tions.

The re­struc­tured core ex­ec­u­tive team now con­sists of chair­man Gads­by-Dol­ly, vice chair­man Im­bert, la­dy vice chair Robin­son-Reg­is, gen­er­al sec­re­tary Cum­mings and deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Den­nis.