Manning rejects PNM report’s claims of declining support in constituency

Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­[email protected]

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has re­ject­ed claims that sup­port for him with­in the con­stituen­cy is dwin­dling, fol­low­ing a re­port by an in­ter­nal Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) com­mit­tee sug­gest­ing the par­ty’s long-held strong­hold could be un­der threat.

Man­ning in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that San Fer­nan­do East re­mains “rock sol­id” and ques­tioned the tim­ing and fo­cus of the re­port.

He spoke dur­ing a back-to-school ini­tia­tive in the Tar­o­dale com­mu­ni­ty, or­gan­ised by con­stituen­cy area man­ag­er Josi­ah Black­burn, where chil­dren re­ceived free hair­cuts from Man­ning and pro­fes­sion­al bar­bers Marcelin Robert and Seon Small.

The re­port, re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian, not­ed that Man­ning won the con­stituen­cy, which has been held by the PNM since it was cre­at­ed, by 673 votes in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, com­pared with a vic­to­ry mar­gin of 5,173 votes in 2020.

Asked about the find­ings, Man­ning said, “It’s fun­ny that I re­port to the par­ty that the con­stituents are con­cerned about cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the con­stituen­cy, and their re­sponse is to write a re­port on every­thing but the is­sue that I brought to the at­ten­tion of the par­ty.

“I find it very strange, and I think every­one finds it very strange. They spend more time talk­ing about the per­son who made the re­port and the ac­cu­sa­tion than the per­son who should have been the sub­ject of it. You would have to ask them why.”

Re­fut­ing sug­ges­tions that his sup­port base is weak­en­ing, Man­ning said the elec­tion re­sults alone were not an ac­cu­rate mea­sure of sup­port.

“Not at all. We just won an elec­tion in which San Fer­nan­do East is now the on­ly PNM con­stituen­cy from To­co to Ica­cos. We are sur­round­ed by UNC con­stituen­cies,” Man­ning said.

“There are per­sons in the ex­ec­u­tive right now who lost rel­a­tive­ly mar­gin­al or safe seats by al­most 4,000 votes, yet they are in se­nior po­si­tions in the par­ty. So I don’t know why the last elec­tion re­sult could be used as a barom­e­ter of sup­port with­in the con­stituen­cy.

“I promise you that is ac­tu­al­ly not the case. San Fer­nan­do East is rock sol­id, and we are with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and we re­main that way.”

Man­ning point­ed out that oth­er PNM MPs se­cured vic­to­ry by even nar­row­er mar­gins.

“San Fer­nan­do East is the on­ly PNM con­stituen­cy out­side of the East-West Cor­ri­dor. Why are you pick­ing on me?

“We had no sup­port. Our chair­man was in an­oth­er con­stituen­cy fight­ing an elec­tion in To­ba­go, which she lost. There were al­le­ga­tions of a no-vote whis­per cam­paign na­tion­al­ly by some per­sons with­in the par­ty, and we were sur­round­ed by UNC con­stituen­cies. De­spite all of that, San Fer­nan­do East is still red. So why pick on me?”

Speak­ing about a re­cent gen­er­al mem­ber­ship meet­ing, Man­ning said mem­bers were over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ive.

He said many con­stituents had raised con­cerns about the ac­tiv­i­ties of var­i­ous mem­bers of the San Fer­nan­do East ex­ec­u­tive who were even­tu­al­ly forced to re­sign.

He said mem­bers now want a new ex­ec­u­tive in whom they can place their trust and con­fi­dence.

Man­ning said he had raised con­cerns with the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive on be­half of con­stituents re­gard­ing con­stituen­cy ac­tiv­i­ties, ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion mat­ters and for­mer con­stituen­cy chair­man Pa­tri­cia Alex­is.

Re­it­er­at­ing his ob­jec­tions to the ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion process, he said: “I have not been hap­py with the process. I be­lieve it has been rife with bias and con­flict of in­ter­est, and that’s some­thing that I will say here and say any­where. I’ve writ­ten sev­er­al let­ters in re­sponse to what has been done.”

He said he has not seen any re­port aris­ing from the process but was in­formed it had been sent to the PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil on Fri­day night to be ap­proved and act­ed up­on.

“Even though I’ve nev­er had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the re­port or even re­spond to it. How that is in the frame of nat­ur­al jus­tice, I have no idea,” he said.

“But there are per­sons in the par­ty who be­lieve that is the way busi­ness should be con­duct­ed. I as­sure them that is not the way it is go­ing to hap­pen.”

Asked whether he felt vic­timised with­in the par­ty, Man­ning said he did not.

“I feel like a per­son who stood up for his con­stituents. Some­one whom the con­stituents have placed their trust in.

“That’s part of the job. Whether I have to stand up against my own par­ty or some­one else to sup­port the con­stituents of San Fer­nan­do East, that’s what I signed up to do, and that’s what I will con­tin­ue to do.”

Man­ning al­so con­firmed he was mut­ed dur­ing the Gen­er­al Coun­cil’s on­line meet­ing on Fri­day, de­scrib­ing the in­ci­dent as un­for­tu­nate.

“As I said, I have not had any sight of the re­port. I have not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond to the re­port. I tried to say that at the meet­ing, and there were oth­er mem­bers there who felt that I should not have been al­lowed a fo­rum to speak. That’s un­for­tu­nate.”

He said be­fore the meet­ing, he sub­mit­ted two let­ters on the mat­ter, nei­ther of which was read.

“I have no idea why. We have to de­cide ex­act­ly what needs to be done next be­cause I’ve sent let­ters and there has been no re­sponse. As I said, I have not seen any re­port.”

Man­ning said many par­ty groups were dis­sat­is­fied with the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process and were not giv­en suf­fi­cient time to pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion to val­i­date their sta­tus.

“Many of them were out of the coun­try and did not have enough time to sup­ply the in­for­ma­tion they felt was nec­es­sary to prove and val­i­date their ex­is­tence. So they felt that the val­i­da­tion process was, I don’t want to say a sham, but not one that would have pro­duced an ac­cu­rate re­sult.”

He al­so again dis­missed any sug­ges­tion he in­tend­ed to join the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

“That would cause my fa­ther to roll in his grave,” he said.