Beckles, Manning deny rift in PNM

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning have re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions of a rift with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), as the par­ty works through a pub­lic dis­agree­ment over the in­ter­nal process in Man­ning’s con­stituen­cy.

Beck­les said dis­agree­ments are not un­usu­al with­in po­lit­i­cal par­ties and in­sist­ed the PNM’s con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides a frame­work for re­solv­ing them.

“Peo­ple talk about in­ter­nal wran­glings and they talk about rift. In po­lit­i­cal par­ties you have dis­agree­ments. That is what par­ties have from time to time but as it re­lates to rifts, no there is no rifts.”

Her com­ments came af­ter a re­cent one-on-one meet­ing with Man­ning, dur­ing which the two dis­cussed con­cerns he had raised about the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy.

Beck­les said the meet­ing was not the first time they had dis­cussed the is­sue and that the fo­cus was on en­sur­ing the par­ty fol­lows its es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

“We spoke about his con­cerns about San Fer­nan­do East. He shared his con­cerns. This is not the first time we have met on the is­sue. I made sure we talked about the process. The par­ty has a con­sti­tu­tion, we are 70 years old. There is a process and we will fol­low the process.”

Man­ning, mean­while, al­so re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the dis­agree­ment re­flect­ed a frac­ture with­in the PNM.

“Yeah, I mean there's no frac­ture in the par­ty right now. What you're see­ing re­al­ly is a dis­agree­ment that has be­come pub­lic. It's re­al­ly a dis­agree­ment over process and what should be done.”

Man­ning said he had raised con­cerns about ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy which he be­lieved re­quired in­ter­ven­tion, but said the mat­ter was ini­tial­ly not be­ing han­dled in the way he want­ed.

He said the res­ig­na­tion of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive has opened the way for what he de­scribed as "free and fair elec­tions" in San Fer­nan­do East.

“They have been forced to re­sign and that has cleared the way to hav­ing free and fair elec­tions in the con­stituen­cy at this point in time. I'm very hap­py with the process at this point.”

Man­ning said he would con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the process, in­clud­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of par­ty groups and the over­all con­stituen­cy elec­tion, and would raise any con­cerns that emerge.

The MP al­so stood by his de­ci­sion to take his con­cerns pub­lic, say­ing he had no re­grets.

“Not at all. If I have to call out cor­rup­tion with­in the con­stituen­cy or par­ty to make for a bet­ter Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment then that's what I'm go­ing to do.”

Man­ning said the PNM could not af­ford to com­pro­mise its cred­i­bil­i­ty as it seeks to re­turn to of­fice.

“We can­not win any elec­tion if we start look­ing ex­act­ly like the UNC.”

De­spite the pub­lic dis­agree­ment, Man­ning said his re­la­tion­ship with Beck­les and oth­er se­nior mem­bers of the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive re­mains in­tact.

He said he had met with Beck­les sev­er­al times dur­ing the week and de­scribed those dis­cus­sions as pro­duc­tive.

“I've had sev­er­al meet­ings with the op­po­si­tion leader this week. They all went ex­treme­ly well and we have re­al­ly been dis­cussing a way to chart the way for­ward with­in the con­stituen­cy and par­ty.”