Beckles responds to Rowley invitation row

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has bro­ken her si­lence on the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the de­liv­ery of an in­vi­ta­tion for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) re­cent 70th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions to for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

In a Face­book post yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the sit­u­a­tion presents a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for the PNM to strength­en its in­ter­nal process­es and “re­build our move­ment.”

She added, “I have been in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Dr Row­ley, fol­low­ing which I have ini­ti­at­ed a re­view of the cir­cum­stances with a view to en­sur­ing that ap­pro­pri­ate sys­tems are put in place to pre­vent any sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion from aris­ing in the fu­ture.”

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Dr Row­ley main­tained that he was not for­mal­ly in­vit­ed to the par­ty’s mile­stone event, de­spite the PNM pro­duc­ing ev­i­dence of an in­vi­ta­tion let­ter.

He dis­missed the par­ty’s re­sponse, in­sist­ing he stands by his state­ment un­til the in­vi­ta­tion is ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­ered, quip­ping, “So, I am a liar!”

Row­ley said no in­vi­ta­tion let­ter was re­ceived at his home and chal­lenged the par­ty to clar­i­fy who, if any­one, de­liv­ered them.