Gail Alexan­der

This week­end, PN­Mites must vote wise­ly for the right lead­er­ship - and not for those peo­ple who are echo­ing the UNC's nar­ra­tive!

That was the call last night from En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, the Lead­ers in Ser­vice's (LIS) can­di­date for chair­man in PNM's in­ter­nal elec­tions.

Vot­ing be­gins to­mor­row (Sat) and con­tin­ues on Sun­day and De­cem­ber 4.

Young was among speak­ers at LIS' meet­ing in Diego Mar­tin lead­ing up to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's fea­ture ad­dress. The venue was filled with Min­is­ters, MPs, sup­port­ers, cer­tain DM West "back­ers" and oth­ers.

Young, who said the PNM was on the eve of some­thing crit­i­cal for par­ty and coun­try, added, "We have a day left and must make the right choic­es ... you see those peo­ple who come for­ward and talk about 'ser­vice, ser­vice, ser­vice' - tell them to rock so!"

Young said he was among those who worked with Row­ley on the Email­gate mat­ter.

"But who was around from 2010 to help re­build the par­ty? I know a few who weren't there ... one of them put her­self for­ward, she sud­den­ly re­mem­ber she had a par­ty card and say 'I'm a mem­ber and I can lead the par­ty'. But we say, rock so!

"As we en­ter elec­tions, we must re­mem­ber who was with us in times of ad­ver­si­ty, and helped Dr Row­ley re­build. Send them a strong mes­sage - he's the one we chose!"

In­di­rect­ly ref­er­enc­ing Wednes­day's failed court case by lead­er­ship can­di­date Karen Nunez-Tesheira, he slammed those who'd gone to court and said PNM's gen­er­al coun­cil didn't tell them X and Y, or they didn't know what hap­pened in the coun­cil.

"...Be­cause you're not a mem­ber! You're not around us! How many gen­er­al coun­cils you re­al­ly went to? How you could jump on a UNC nar­ra­tive and ques­tion the Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters of the same PNM you want to lead? So, rock so!"

He said the court had stat­ed there was no ev­i­dence of bad faith and no need to wor­ry about PNM's elec­tion, as the po­lice will be present, as will be Pan­nel Kerr Fos­ter and an ex­cel­lent su­per­vi­so­ry team.

Young re­peat­ed ques­tions he'd raised about whether in 2009 when Cli­co was about to col­lapse, if "... Madame Rush-to-Court, who wasn't with us in 2010 but was Fi­nance Min­is­ter in 2009, what she did a few days be­fore the whole (Cli­co) thing be­came pub­lic?

"Did you or any fam­i­ly mem­ber, just be­fore the gov­ern­ment in­ter­vened, go qui­et­ly and with­draw mon­ey from the whole Cli­co em­pire? And you think you have the in­tegri­ty to lead our great par­ty?! Rock so!"

Young said the then-gov­ern­ment propped Cli­co up but the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar gov­ern­ment did noth­ing to re­cov­er the mon­ey and no se­cu­ri­ty was tak­en for the bil­lions of tax­pay­ers' funds in­volved.

He said when the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion en­tered, an­oth­er "so-called PN­Mite," who in the Sun­day Guardian crit­i­cis­ing the PNM, was ad­vis­ing Cli­co share­hold­ers how to keep the gov­ern­ment out of the is­sue.

"So, when you have these so-called PN­Mites pre­tend­ing they're PNM, all yuh do them a favour and tell them to rock so!" he added.

Young, who said he "sleeps in red," al­so pelt­ed words at UNC about the PNM's en­er­gy achieve­ments, in­clud­ing $11B earn­ings.

"So, PNM fam­i­ly, you have to choose the right lead­er­ship..."

Fos­ter: I said the psalms and we beat them in court

Gen­er­al sec­re­tary un­op­posed Fos­ter Cum­mings said the PNM was alive and well.

"... Nev­er again Kam­la! Nev­er again!"

Cum­mings, re­call­ing how he re­ceived the doc­u­ments for the re­cent court case, said he re­cit­ed the psalms. "Then I called the leader, we hired some good lawyers, went to court and put a sound cut­tail on them!"

He said some vy­ing for PNM of­fice were sound­ing like the UNC.

"... A sim­i­lar nar­ra­tive...I can't stom­ach that those who want to lead the PNM sound­ing just like they come from the bo­som of the UNC!

"They want to lead the PNM, we re­build­ing for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, yet you cussing the par­ty - mem­bers, demon­strate to them how you feel about Bal­isi­er House and vote for LIS!"

Can­di­date for vice chair­man Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly re­lat­ed how she - a Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist and moth­er of three - en­tered pol­i­tics in 2014 and went from "the fry­ing pan" in Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment " in­to the fire" in Ed­u­ca­tion.