Manning challenges PNM inquiry and objects to process for constituency elections

GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has put arrange­ments in place for San Fer­nan­do East par­ty group elec­tions to start last Fri­day (Sep­tem­ber 4) and run un­til Oc­to­ber 10, to­wards the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. How­ev­er, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has re­ject­ed the process and sought a sus­pen­sion un­til he re­ceives in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing why 15 par­ty groups were omit­ted.

This was con­firmed by PNM ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials af­ter last Fri­day’s spe­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil held to con­firm the re­port of a team ver­i­fy­ing SFE par­ty groups. Man­ning’s con­cerns had in­clud­ed ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The team’s re­port was ex­am­ined by PNM’s Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive last Wednes­day.

This fol­lowed the PNM lead­er­ship’s ef­forts to re­solve ten­sions in the SFE unit be­tween Man­ning and Alex­is. In June, both lodged com­plaints against each oth­er about the run­ning of the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing Man­ning’s con­cern about a by-elec­tion which was im­prop­er­ly held. PNM deputy lead­ers Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus and San­jiv Bood­hu were among a pan­el that in­ves­ti­gat­ed their claims and ob­tained no proof of the cor­rup­tion Man­ning al­leged.

At the height of ten­sions two weeks ago, both sides ex­plod­ed pub­licly. The lead­er­ship met with the ex­ec­u­tive, which sub­se­quent­ly re­signed. The lead­er­ship al­so pub­licly re­buked Man­ning.

On par­ty groups ver­i­fi­ca­tion, which is need­ed pri­or to the elec­tion of a new ex­ec­u­tive, the Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee found there are 30 valid par­ty groups in SFE.

In­ter­nal elec­tions - in­clud­ing Youth and Women’s League unit elec­tions - were man­dat­ed to be­gin last Fri­day and con­clude by Oc­to­ber 10. A new con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive will then be elect­ed.

A five-mem­ber team was ap­point­ed to con­duct and over­see SFE’s in­ter­nal elec­tions. It com­pris­es PNM elec­tion of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram (chair­man) and oth­er Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers Max­ine Richards, Cur­tis Shade, Al­isha Ro­mano, and Sharon Fe­lix.

How­ev­er, ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials, list­ing Man­ning’s con­cerns, said he:

• Re­ject­ed the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive’s de­ci­sion, fol­low­ing the Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Com­mit­tee’s re­port, since he felt the five per­sons are na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cers or cur­rent Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers and were ap­point­ed by the CE and an­swer to that body. Man­ning felt that wasn’t an over­sight but “was the same body ex­am­in­ing its own work, through of­fi­cers of its own choos­ing”, mi­nus an in­de­pen­dent body.

• Took is­sue with the CE’s view that “no oth­er per­son/group is au­tho­rised to con­duct any par­ty unit elec­tion” since this ex­clud­ed scruti­ny, in­clud­ing by him­self as MP and in­de­pen­dent ob­servers.

• Re­ject­ed three of the five ap­pointees, al­leg­ing one mem­ber wrote a “scathing” let­ter on be­half of the Women’s League at­tack­ing him; an­oth­er al­leged­ly fea­tured in me­dia re­ports along­side Alex­is, and the chair­man re­cent­ly over­saw an SFE ex­ec­u­tive by-elec­tion, cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a com­plaint be­fore Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

• Ex­pressed con­cern over the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion of 15 par­ty groups “who served the PNM for many years” and that there was no no­tice, rea­sons, or op­por­tu­ni­ty to be heard. He felt all par­ty groups were de­nied recog­ni­tion by SFE’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive, were ex­clud­ed and asked for the cri­te­ria to be pub­lished and for groups to be al­lowed to an­swer be­fore be­ing dis­en­fran­chised.

• Re­quest­ed sus­pen­sion of the SFE ex­er­cise pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion of his points, scruti­ny of the five Over­seer mem­bers, re­con­sti­tu­tion of the team with fresh mem­bers with his in­put in se­lec­tion; rea­sons for par­ty groups’ omis­sion, in­de­pen­dent scruti­ny of elec­tions.

Par­ty of­fi­cials con­firmed Man­ning sought a re­sponse by mid-month, in the ab­sence of which, he in­di­cat­ed his in­ten­tion to place mat­ters be­fore the ap­pro­pri­ate in­ter­nal PNM fo­ra and “any oth­er body hav­ing ju­ris­dic­tion.” They, how­ev­er, said Man­ning re­mained will­ing to meet to re­solve mat­ters.

PNM of­fi­cials said Man­ning al­so re­ject­ed the In­quiry re­port on sev­er­al grounds and re­quest­ed the with­draw­al of cer­tain find­ings. They said he want­ed his con­cerns de­tailed at last Fri­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil, but they weren’t.

Among the grounds he cit­ed were:

• Non-re­ceipt of the In­quiry and Ver­i­fi­ca­tion teams’ re­ports and not be­ing in­vit­ed to an­swer them be­fore Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive/Gen­er­al Coun­cil adop­tion.

• While he didn’t dis­pute that the re­la­tion­ship with Alex­is had bro­ken down, he felt this was a symp­tom, and the re­port said noth­ing about the cause.

• He ap­point­ed Gron­lund-Nunez man­ag­er of SFE’s area man­ag­er sys­tem and not “Con­stituen­cy co-or­di­na­tor”, and the Com­mit­tee had the means to sum­mon in­for­ma­tion if it was un­clear. It was an op­er­a­tional post with­in the MP’s con­stituen­cy of­fice and with­in his purview to make.

• The Com­mit­tee didn’t iden­ti­fy the par­ty pro­vi­sion which was “breached” by the ap­point­ment.

• Mis­lead­ing claim that he wasn’t in­ter­est­ed in me­di­a­tion, since is­sues can­not be re­solved by pri­vate ac­com­mo­da­tion while for­mal com­plaints con­cern­ing the con­duct of an SFE elec­tion re­main un­de­ter­mined; al­so al­le­ga­tions re­gard­ing Alex­is.

• Com­ment on his elec­tion per­for­mance wasn’t rel­e­vant and ig­nored the na­tion­al swing in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion. Re­sources were with­held from SFE by the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, and there was a na­tion­al “No-vote” whis­per cam­paign al­leged­ly linked to a se­nior mem­ber of the present na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive.

• Lack of ac­tion against peo­ple de­spite find­ing that the Con­stituen­cy Ex­ec­u­tive act­ed ul­tra vires the PNM’s Con­sti­tu­tion on the by-elec­tion.

• Ex­pressed con­cern that In­dar Paras­ram was ap­point­ed to chair the team su­per­vis­ing SFE par­ty group elec­tions when Paras­ram head­ed the by-elec­tion, which the In­quiry Com­mit­tee stat­ed was held ul­tra vires the PNM’s Con­sti­tu­tion.

PNM po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les didn’t re­ply to the is­sues. Oth­er ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials main­tained that the process is in place and the mat­ter is be­ing ad­dressed.