Analyst challenges PNM’s assessment of Manning’s popularity

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed is chal­leng­ing the PNM to ex­plain why Bri­an Man­ning’s nar­row 2025 elec­tion vic­to­ry is be­ing used as ev­i­dence of “dwin­dling” pop­u­lar­i­ty when three of the par­ty’s oth­er suc­cess­ful can­di­dates won by sim­i­lar­ly slim or even small­er mar­gins.

Mo­hammed said Man­ning’s 673-vote vic­to­ry must be con­sid­ered along­side the per­for­mance of oth­er suc­cess­ful PNM can­di­dates.

He ques­tioned whether the par­ty con­duct­ed any sci­en­tif­ic as­sess­ment to de­ter­mine why Man­ning’s mar­gin fell from 5,173 votes in 2020 to 673 in 2025, rather than sim­ply at­tribut­ing the de­cline to his per­son­al pop­u­lar­i­ty.

Mo­hammed point­ed out that Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les re­tained Ari­ma by 699 votes, while PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les won Arou­ca/Lopinot by 259 and Do­minic Ro­main cap­tured Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca by 254.

In fact, he said Man­ning ranked 11th among the PNM’s 13 suc­cess­ful can­di­dates by mar­gin of vic­to­ry, ahead of Gon­za­les and Ro­main.

“If the par­ty now wants to dis­cuss pop­u­lar­i­ty with­in its ranks, then the par­ty ought to be led by the peo­ple who se­cured the widest ranges of vic­to­ries and con­fi­dence of the vot­ers, not so?” Mo­hammed asked.

Mo­hammed al­so chal­lenged the sug­ges­tion that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the dif­fi­cul­ties in San Fer­nan­do East could rest pri­mar­i­ly with Man­ning, say­ing con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives and lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives are crit­i­cal to a con­stituen­cy’s po­lit­i­cal ma­chin­ery.

He ques­tioned whether the frac­tured re­la­tion­ship be­tween Man­ning, for­mer con­stituen­cy chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers ex­ist­ed be­fore the 2025 elec­tion. If it did, Mo­hammed ar­gued, that would raise an­oth­er ques­tion: whether Man­ning man­aged to re­tain the seat de­spite a dys­func­tion­al con­stituen­cy struc­ture.

Mo­hammed al­so crit­i­cised the sev­en com­plaints now be­fore the PNM’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Com­mit­tee, par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause they orig­i­nat­ed from mem­bers across sev­er­al con­stituen­cies.

He said com­plaints orig­i­nat­ing out­side San Fer­nan­do East could po­ten­tial­ly be in­flu­enced by in­ter­nal par­ty in­ter­ests and ques­tioned whether they should car­ry the same weight as com­plaints aris­ing di­rect­ly from the con­stituen­cy. - Akash Sama­roo