Analysts split on PNM Senator John-Bates’ fate

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have of­fered dif­fer­ent pre­scrip­tions for Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as pres­sure mounts over the fu­ture of em­bat­tled Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates.

The con­tro­ver­sy in­ten­si­fied on Wednes­day when a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee was abrupt­ly sus­pend­ed, with re­ports in­di­cat­ing ob­jec­tions to John-Bates’ pres­ence.

Sources say com­mit­tee mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal raised con­cerns tied to her con­duct dur­ing an ear­li­er sit­ting of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC), which ex­am­ined the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

The is­sue stems from an in­ci­dent two weeks ago, when the PNM re­moved John-Bates from the PAAC fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of im­prop­er con­duct.

The mat­ter re­port­ed­ly arose af­ter for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh in­ad­ver­tent­ly sub­mit­ted a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing vis­i­ble “Track Changes,” ex­pos­ing in­ter­nal ed­its and com­ments.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James urged re­straint, ar­gu­ing that John-Bates should not be cast aside over what he be­lieves may be a first mis­step.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, James sug­gest­ed the sit­u­a­tion re­flects a fail­ure of in­ter­nal guid­ance rather than in­di­vid­ual mal­ice.

He said se­nior par­ty fig­ures ought to have en­sured that a rel­a­tive­ly new sen­a­tor was prop­er­ly ad­vised on pro­ce­dur­al and tech­ni­cal mat­ters.

“Once she is con­trite. I think Pen­ny and the rest of them should give her a chance, a sec­ond chance, right? Peo­ple make mis­takes; oth­er par­ty of­fi­cials have made greater mis­takes. To me, once she’s con­trite of spir­it, I  think she should be re­tained.”

James main­tained that if John-Bates demon­strates con­tri­tion, Beck­les and the par­ty lead­er­ship should con­sid­er giv­ing her a sec­ond chance.

He added that po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions of­ten strength­en pub­lic con­fi­dence by show­ing un­der­stand­ing and men­tor­ship, par­tic­u­lar­ly when deal­ing with less ex­pe­ri­enced mem­bers.

“There is a kind of pro­jec­tion as to how she would run the par­ty based on the de­ci­sion that she takes in the case of John-Bates.”

How­ev­er, an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has tak­en a hard­line po­si­tion, de­scrib­ing the is­sue as a se­ri­ous eth­i­cal breach that can­not be eas­i­ly over­looked.

Dr Mo­hammed ar­gued that John-Bates, as a qual­i­fied at­tor­ney and pub­lic of­fi­cial, should have been ful­ly aware of the im­pli­ca­tions of shar­ing doc­u­ments with vis­i­ble ed­its.

He con­tends that the episode high­lights broad­er con­cerns with­in the PNM, in­clud­ing what he de­scribed as a ten­den­cy to pro­tect its own.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, the sit­u­a­tion presents a crit­i­cal lead­er­ship test for Beck­les.

“What it shows as well is a fun­da­men­tal flaw in the PNM, they will do any­thing to pro­tect their own in­ter­est– it aligns to fac­tors why they lost the elec­tion.

“This is a test of the lead­er­ship of Mrs Beck­les Robin­son. And it may au­gur well for con­fi­dence to use the John-Bates is­sue to add de­f­i­n­i­tion to her lead­er­ship by shak­ing up the en­tire Sen­ate line­up.”

The mat­ter now rests square­ly with Beck­les, who con­firmed on Wednes­day that she is sched­uled to meet with John-Bates.