Political analysts say PNM must heal rifts within party

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are urg­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to con­front its in­ter­nal di­vi­sions head-on, fol­low­ing a pub­lic ap­peal by par­ty chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les for uni­ty as the Op­po­si­tion pre­pares for the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Speak­ing at a par­ty meet­ing in Mara­bel­la last Thurs­day, Gon­za­les called on mem­bers to put aside per­son­al griev­ances, in­sist­ing that in­ter­nal dis­putes must no longer dis­tract from the par­ty’s mis­sion.

“It is our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as PNM mem­bers to put aside our pet­ty dif­fer­ences,” Gon­za­les told sup­port­ers.

“Let us hold hands to­geth­er be­cause our dif­fer­ences are in­signif­i­cant com­pared to the threats that face the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day.”

His com­ments came amid on­go­ing spec­u­la­tion that the PNM has been grap­pling with in­ter­nal frac­tures fol­low­ing its crush­ing de­feat in last year’s gen­er­al elec­tion and the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion from for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia over the week­end, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said Gon­za­les’ mes­sage re­flects what the par­ty has need­ed to ad­dress for some time.

“I have been say­ing from the on­set, even pre-gen­er­al elec­tion, that the PNM had to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion where they stood as a par­ty col­lec­tive­ly,” Mo­hammed said.

“I am one of those who still be­lieve that one of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors of the gen­er­al elec­tion re­sult was the frag­men­ta­tion of the PNM.”

He de­scribed Gon­za­les’ re­marks as both time­ly and nec­es­sary.

“I be­lieve that at this stage, what Mr Gon­za­les has said is rel­e­vant. It is some­thing that is im­por­tant for an Op­po­si­tion par­ty to be hon­est with them­selves with.”

Mo­hammed ar­gued that par­ty mem­bers should stop avoid­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions.

“They need to un­der­stand, stop speak­ing in codes and stop throw­ing words. If there is a split, there is a split. If there is dis­agree­ment, then there is dis­agree­ment.”

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, mean­ing­ful re­build­ing re­quires far more than pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tions of uni­ty.

“The bot­tom line, though, is if the par­ty needs to find its foot­ing to gain com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, be­cause that is what we are in. We are in an en­vi­ron­ment that re­quires com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, in­tro­spec­tion, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, dis­cus­sion and di­a­logue,” he said.

“All of those things are go­ing to be im­por­tant in or­der for the par­ty to be sus­tain­able and suc­cess­ful go­ing for­ward.”

He sug­gest­ed the par­ty em­bark on struc­tured ef­forts to heal in­ter­nal di­vi­sions.

He added that the par­ty has strug­gled to build on mo­ments of po­lit­i­cal mo­men­tum.

“They are hit­ting highs and lows, and they are not sus­tain­ing the highs. And all of that is say­ing to me that the par­ty re­mains frag­ment­ed, that they are not sup­port­ing each oth­er when there needs to be a fol­low-through.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James ques­tioned whether the Op­po­si­tion is ad­e­quate­ly pre­pared for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign, sug­gest­ing the par­ty ap­pears to be strug­gling to re­de­fine it­self out­side of gov­ern­ment.

“And they have not re­al­ly be­gun, at least apart from say­ing they are on the ground, but they have not be­gun to politic, to go on the hus­tings, and to say things that might at­tract peo­ple to vote for them,” James said.

“Peo­ple look at what is go­ing on and know that we have four more years to go with the PNM not in pow­er. So what is it they are of­fer­ing? What is it that they can of­fer?”

James said while the par­ty could still sur­prise ob­servers, its in­ter­nal prob­lems re­main ev­i­dent.

“I think they’re in a des­per­ate place. And the re­al rea­son that they’re out of pow­er [is] be­cause they don’t know what to do when they are not in pow­er.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed for­mer prime min­is­ter Row­ley to de­ter­mine whether he had any ad­vice for the par­ty at this time fol­low­ing Gon­za­les’ plea.

How­ev­er, Row­ley said, “I do not give ad­vice in pub­lic.”