Hazel Manning contests SFE chairmanship today

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Hazel Man­ning will be seek­ing the post of chair­man when the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's (PNM) San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy stages its ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions this evening.

And Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to have the Sen­ate meet to­mor­row amid the 2027 Bud­get land­scape to de­bate Gov­ern­ment's Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Amend­ment Bill 2026.

Af­ter the 2027 Bud­get is con­clud­ed this evening, the PNM's San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion will be con­duct­ed from 6 pm at the Pleas­antville Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Mrs Man­ning, wid­ow of late for­mer SFE MP and for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, will be con­test­ing the post of chair­man. Mrs Man­ning is the moth­er of MP Bri­an Man­ning.

The last SFE ex­ec­u­tive, led by PNM as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pa­tri­cia Alex­is, re­signed in Au­gust fol­low­ing a clash be­tween Alex­is and MP Man­ning. This fol­lowed com­plaint and counter-com­plaint, re­spec­tive­ly, against each oth­er, which were made to the PNM's lead­er­ship in June. A par­ty-ap­point­ed team in­ves­ti­gat­ed this.

But fol­low­ing sub­se­quent pub­lic state­ments by Man­ning and the Alex­is-led ex­ec­u­tive, the lead­er­ship met with the ex­ec­u­tive, which re­signed af­ter­wards. The lead­er­ship al­so rep­ri­mand­ed Bri­an Man­ning.

The lead­er­ship or­dered in­ter­nal elec­tions of all SFE units, peak­ing with the elec­tion of a new ex­ec­u­tive. An ini­tial­ly an­nounced date of Oc­to­ber 15 was changed re­cent­ly to to­day, since the venue wasn't avail­able on Oc­to­ber 15, the par­ty said.

The SFE con­stituen­cy is the last to com­plete its in­ter­nal elec­tions be­fore the PNM''s No­vem­ber con­ven­tion at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, Ma­coya.

To­mor­row's Sen­ate sit­ting is a de­par­ture from the norm, ac­cord­ing to PNM Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi at last Thurs­day's me­dia brief­ing.

Dur­ing bud­get time, the fo­cus in Par­lia­ment is on bud­get de­lib­er­a­tions un­til the pack­age for a fis­cal year is con­clud­ed and the bud­get is passed. That is usu­al­ly af­ter three weeks max­i­mum al­lo­cat­ed for Par­lia­ment dis­cus­sion of the bud­get.

The ex­er­cise in­volves pre­sen­ta­tion by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter and de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, fol­lowed by the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee stage, where the Op­po­si­tion ques­tions min­is­ters on bud­get items in their port­fo­lios and, last­ly, the bud­get is de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate.

How­ev­er, de­spite to­day's 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the Sen­ate will to­mor­row be fo­cus­ing on the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Amend­ment Bill.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate leader Dar­rell Al­la­har told Guardian Me­dia, "Their (PNM) sen­a­tors are not sit­ting in the House to de­bate the bud­get. Our Gov­ern­ment isn't afraid of hard work.

"The leg­isla­tive busi­ness of the Sen­ate con­tin­ues and the bill is an im­por­tant one for or­di­nary cit­i­zens. It should not be de­layed."

The bill seeks to in­crease the num­ber of re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions from 14 to 1, with the ad­di­tion of three new bor­oughs in Cou­va, St Au­gus­tine and Barataria, el­e­vate Ch­agua­nas to city sta­tus and make sev­er­al bound­ary changes.

It was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Wednes­day by Gov­ern­ment votes alone. The Op­po­si­tion PNM re­ject­ed it.

Al­so, fol­low­ing to­day's 2027 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be in To­ba­go to­mor­row for the open­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, To­ba­go's three new po­lice posts and the sod turn­ing for the Mar­riot re­sort.