Pressure mounts on Penny: PNM stalwarts tell her it’s time for decisive leadership

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

With ad­di­tion­al re­port­ing by

Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Ahead of lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, the Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, is be­ing called on to be more de­ci­sive in her de­ci­sions and shed some po­lit­i­cal bag­gage if the par­ty is to re­turn to pow­er.

On Jan­u­ary 12, Beck­les faced her first crush­ing de­feat in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA). Hav­ing cap­tured 10,456 votes, the PNM lost all 15 seats to Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), which se­cured 16,240 votes as a fair­ly new par­ty.

The wipe­out of the PNM from the To­ba­go land­scape left some sup­port­ers dis­ap­point­ed and hurt, as they urged Beck­les to act de­ci­sive­ly and ag­gres­sive­ly in her lead­er­ship role.

With the PNM now cel­e­brat­ing its 70th an­niver­sary, for­mer San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man An­tho­ny Roberts ad­mit­ted that he felt hurt fol­low­ing the PNM’s back-to-back elec­tion loss­es.

“No­body would be hap­py about this. Emo­tion­al­ly, it would dis­turb me,” said Roberts, who served as chair­man of the PNM’s elec­tions su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee.

He said the coun­try faced pres­sure “un­der the PNM. But it’s not what you do is how you do it. Peo­ple would have quar­relled with Row­ley. They doh like his at­ti­tude and thing. But that was re­quired at this stage of our de­vel­op­ment. You have to be ag­gres­sive, or else they walk over you.”

Roberts said Row­ley com­mand­ed re­spect in the re­gion and demon­strat­ed aca­d­e­m­ic strength.

He said the same peo­ple who con­demned Row­ley for his abra­sive style of lead­er­ship and want­ed him to go are “now call­ing him un­cle” af­ter ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing the coun­try in­to a deep mess with the im­po­si­tion of tax­es, traf­fic fines and ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment.

“You know, you nev­er miss the wa­ter un­til the well runs dry,” said Roberts, who al­so served as chair­man of the PNM’s Youth League.

Roberts said while the par­ty has to set­tle down, strate­gise and re­build, Beck­les has to find her­self.

“She’s new to the po­si­tion … and she has quite a lot of work to do as leader now, per­son­al­ly and par­ty.”

Beck­les was of­fi­cial­ly elect­ed, un­op­posed, as PNM Po­lit­i­cal Leader soon af­ter the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion last year, in June. She is the PNM’s first fe­male leader. Her ap­point­ment as Op­po­si­tion Leader came a month be­fore, in May.

Asked if Beck­les has the right peo­ple in the PNM back­ing her, Roberts re­spond­ed, “That might be part of the prob­lem. But she has to be able to iden­ti­fy that and fix what­ev­er it is, if you’re se­ri­ous. It’s not about friends … it’s about get­ting the right fit to bring on. Some peo­ple will get vex with you, but that is what the sto­ry is.”

It’s al­so more than tak­ing pho­tographs, he said.

Roberts point­ed out that the PNM has ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple who can ad­vise Beck­les.

Asked if Beck­les has been demon­strat­ing lead­er­ship qual­i­ties to woo PNM sup­port­ers back in­to the par­ty, Roberts replied, “I would be hon­est with you, I would like to see more vi­bran­cy. As I al­ways say, pol­i­tics is not church. You need a lev­el of ag­gres­sion. And I think that is ab­sent, but if she could change that, it would be in the in­ter­est of every­one.”

In life, Roberts said, peo­ple have to make ad­just­ments.

“Once she could ad­just her­self, and she must ac­cept that that is a prob­lem and want to make the change.”

Roberts said hav­ing ex­pe­ri­ence is one thing; the oth­er is how you ap­ply it.

“Peo­ple must want to hear you. These are some of the things, I guess, they would have to work on.”

For for­mer PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, the PNM leader is not de­ci­sive enough.

He said it has been over a month, Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj was seen at­tend­ing a UNC fundrais­er in Cou­va and “she (Beck­les) hasn’t done any­thing about it. And that is why peo­ple are ques­tion­ing her. That is why peo­ple have some prob­lems …par­ty mem­bers have prob­lems. Look how long this thing has hap­pened with Bal­ly … and she can’t de­cide on what to do. The longer he stays, the more he will un­der­mine the par­ty.”

The PNM man­ages the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ford said no sit­ting UNC may­or or chair­man would at­tend a PNM fundrais­er be­cause it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

“Why Bal­ly choose to go to their fundrais­er and ig­nore his own coun­cil din­ner? So the point is, in these kinds of po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, lead­ers have to act de­ci­sive­ly.”

Ford, a for­mer Ari­ma may­or, said tough de­ci­sions must be made and dealt with ur­gent­ly.

He drew ref­er­ence to Row­ley’s no-non­sense ap­proach to­wards his Cab­i­net mem­bers when they stepped out of line.

In 2019, Row­ley fired then Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald for the pres­ence of Sea Lots com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Cedric Burke at her swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny as pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion min­is­ter at the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent in St Ann’s.

Two days af­ter re­vok­ing her ap­point­ment, Row­ley al­so stripped Mc­Don­ald of her po­si­tion as the PNM’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader.

Ford said he was one of sev­er­al PNM peo­ple who raised con­cerns with the se­lec­tion of Faris Al-Rawi and Fos­ter Cum­mings as Sen­a­tors, which Beck­les de­fend­ed, cit­ing their ex­pe­ri­ence and ser­vice as valu­able.

“But she ig­nored that.”

In­sist­ing that he has noth­ing per­son­al against Cum­mings, Ford said he should not have been giv­en the po­si­tion “be­cause he will have ques­tions to an­swer, which is what is hap­pen­ing now.”

Ford said there will be con­se­quences for the PNM, “but we don’t know how it will im­pact in terms of our sup­port base and mem­ber­ship.”

Re­gard­ing the PNM be­ing top­pled in the THA elec­tion, Ford could not say what went wrong.

“We ex­pect­ed to get some seats. This did not hap­pen.”

He said To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine fought a cam­paign of hate against Trinidad and won.

Asked if Beck­les has the lead­er­ship qual­i­ties to take the PNM for­ward, Ford said she has been try­ing, but on­ly time will tell.

“I will not go in­to any per­son­al de­bate to say whether she has the abil­i­ty or not.”

Ford was told that many peo­ple held the view that Beck­les lacked charis­ma.

“At the end of the day, it is the PNM that will make the de­ci­sion on the lead­er­ship. At the end of the day, the PNM mem­ber­ship will have to ral­ly and do what they think is best.”

Hav­ing bat­tled many de­feats, Ford said the PNM has nev­er sur­ren­dered.

“We will con­tin­ue to fight.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the beat­ing the PNM sus­tained in To­ba­go was their sec­ond in nine months.

The first was last April, when the UNC beat the PNM, cap­tur­ing 26 of the 41 seats with 334,874 votes af­ter be­ing in op­po­si­tion for ten years.

Mo­hammed said when Beck­les was elect­ed leader last June, she “in­her­it­ed a bro­ken and di­vid­ed par­ty,” know­ing ful­ly well the PNM had re­ceived 102,000 few­er votes in 2025.

Beck­les was re-elect­ed as Ari­ma MP with 7,055 votes in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, com­pared with the 9,293 votes she net­ted in the 2020 poll.

Mo­hammed said the PNM has sur­vived sev­er­al bat­tles over its 70 years, which it marked this week­end.

He cit­ed the NAR’s 33-3 win against the PNM in the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion, stat­ing that over time, the par­ty grew stronger to beat its op­po­nents and form the gov­ern­ment.

Mo­hammed said the PNM has a his­to­ry of re­mo­bil­is­ing, re­build­ing and re-emerg­ing af­ter los­ing, and it’s all up to Beck­les to bring vic­to­ry home in the next lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Breath­ing new life in­to the PNM will not be easy for Beck­les, Mo­hammed said, stat­ing that she must have ca­pa­ble, ded­i­cat­ed and loy­al peo­ple back­ing her.

He said some peo­ple around Beck­les have been “drag­ging down” the par­ty’s name.

Mo­hammed ad­vised Beck­les to re­move some of her Sen­a­tors and bring in new faces.

“Pen­ny can reshuf­fle her Sen­a­tors at her dis­cre­tion and get rid of the heavy bag­gage.”

Two of her Sen­a­tors, Faris Al-Rawi and Fos­ter Cum­mings, were un­suc­cess­ful in the 2025 elec­tions.

Al-Rawi, who won the San Fer­nan­do West seat in the 2015 and 2020 elec­tions, was edged out by UNC’s Dr Michael Dowlath, who at­tained 7,341 votes.

Al-Rawi gar­nered 6,638 votes, com­pared to the 8,457 votes he bagged in 2020.

The 6,712 votes Cum­mings at­tained were no match for the 9,585 elec­tors who sup­port­ed Phillip Watts for the La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro seat.

Un­like Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was quite com­bat­ive in­side and out­side Par­lia­ment when he served as prime min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion leader, Mo­hammed said, Beck­les has a calm and col­lec­tive de­meanour.

While every politi­cian has their own per­son­al­i­ty and lead­er­ship style, Mo­hammed said Beck­les needs to be­come bold­er, fiercer and braver to cre­ate an im­pact with her sup­port­ers and mass­es.

“It may be hard for her to do, but it would be un­for­tu­nate for the PNM to win an elec­tion by de­fault. When I say de­fault, I mean build on the UNC’s fail­ures. The longer sup­port­ers take to ad­just to her lead­er­ship style, the more dif­fi­cult it will be for them to suc­ceed,” Mo­hammed said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James be­lieves that the PNM is fad­ing.

He said it is a re­sult of the for­mer gov­ern­ment for­get­ting its sup­port­ers and an­ger­ing the pub­lic with its de­ci­sions and ar­ro­gance dur­ing its stint in gov­ern­ment.

“Its sup­port­ers are ex­pect­ing to get rea­son­able ben­e­fits from be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with the par­ty, but ap­par­ent­ly, when they look around, they are see­ing oth­er peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly high­er up in the hi­er­ar­chy. You re­mem­ber they were of­fer­ing the pub­lic ser­vice five per cent, but they were tak­ing as much as 35 per cent in their ca­pac­i­ties as gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. These guys didn’t need it be­cause they were al­ready feath­er­ing their nests, but the Salary Re­views Com­mis­sion de­cid­ed to raise their salaries, and Row­ley took it. He didn’t have to. He could have re­fused it. I think that an­gered a lot of PNM peo­ple. It an­gered oth­er peo­ple as well.”

“When they lost the gov­ern­ment, we un­der­stood why peo­ple were re­ject­ing them. We re­alised they were feath­er­ing their nests. They were get­ting their new salaries, al­ready big, and, at the same time, they were get­ting con­tracts. Their ap­peal was dis­si­pat­ing. They need some­thing new,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er, the PNM faces a se­ri­ous chal­lenge in at­tract­ing peo­ple who were left dis­en­chant­ed by its gov­ern­ing style.

“Do you re­mem­ber Dr Row­ley try­ing to foist Stu­art Young on the pop­u­la­tion? That’s an­oth­er big event. An­oth­er big event was open­ing the air­port when it wasn’t ready. Row­ley ap­par­ent­ly want­ed to have some­thing to be re­mem­bered by, but the air­port was not ready in a prac­ti­cal way.

“The par­ty seemed to have lost its moor­ings. Peo­ple didn’t feel that their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic will was be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed enough with­in the par­ty it­self, while the gen­er­al pub­lic felt they had to give an­oth­er par­ty a chance. The PNM seems to have run out of ideas. They seem to have lost their en­er­gy. There tends to be a life cy­cle to these things, but they end­ed up get­ting licks,” the po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist added.

PNM’s pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Faris Al-Rawi, has come out in de­fence of Beck­les, stat­ing that since she as­sumed lead­er­ship of the par­ty, her de­ci­sions and ac­tions have been mea­sured and cal­cu­lat­ed.

“She has been hold­ing back on be­ing caus­tic and ag­gres­sive on pur­pose,” Al-Rawi said yes­ter­day dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view.

In the last sev­en months, he said, Beck­les’ eyes have been set on a tar­get.

“But it can­not be that we have to en­gage the pop­u­la­tion with ran­cour right now. We have to en­sure, first­ly, un­der her watch, she’s en­sur­ing that we have learned the lessons of why we lost the elec­tion.”

Al-Rawi said while some peo­ple want to see fire and brim­stone, Beck­les is care­ful­ly ap­proach­ing is­sues of the coun­try.

“From the in­side of the PNM, Pen­ny Beck­les is do­ing a phe­nom­e­nal­ly good job. Democ­ra­cy is not an easy thing to man­age.”

He said Beck­les has built an ex­pres­sive team in the House, and he and mem­bers of the par­ty have all faith in her.

Al-Rawi said Beck­les is not the first leader of the PNM who lost an elec­tion. He said it hap­pened to Patrick Man­ning and Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

When Row­ley lost the 2010 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion to the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, he re­called peo­ple say­ing the par­ty would nev­er see the reins of pow­er again.

The PNM proved them wrong in 2015 and 2020 when they emerged vic­to­ri­ous.

He said the 2025 elec­tion demon­strat­ed a stay-home vote against Row­ley’s man­age­ment of the PNM.

“I think that the fo­cus on mak­ing sure that the par­ty has done its analy­sis to re­cov­er, where it went wrong, why it went wrong, be­cause we went very wrong. And ob­vi­ous­ly, you will no­tice, in the last cou­ple of years un­der Dr Row­ley, I had a lot to say. And many of us in the par­ty had a lot to say.”

He said sev­er­al peo­ple in the par­ty had ob­jec­tions to cer­tain mat­ters.

“And we stood our ground on it. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it turned out that we were right.”

He said An­cil Den­nis was al­ready the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader when Beck­les was elect­ed to lead the par­ty.

“So let me put that plain­ly, the ba­ton that came from Kei­th Row­ley’s hand to Pen­ny’s hand. There was no room to change it.”

How­ev­er, he said ,To­bag­o­ni­ans are dif­fer­ent from Trinida­di­ans.

“To­ba­go is the type of place that makes sure that you have learned your les­son af­ter you’ve been put in time out. This time­out that we have go­ing now is not some­thing that we haven’t ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.”

Al-Rawi said if an elec­tion were to be called to­day in Trinidad, it would be dif­fer­ent from 2025.

“I think that the PNM would cer­tain­ly be gain­ing a lot more and would at the very least, at the very least, take away a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty from the UNC.”

In To­ba­go, he said, the dust is yet to set­tle.

“As for the de­sire for peo­ple to have her with more pro­nounced and ev­i­dent fangs and claws....just wait!”

Mean­while, for­mer hous­ing min­is­ter Dan­ny Mon­tano de­scribed the PNM’s back-to-back elec­tion de­feats as “dis­ap­point­ing.”

Elect­ed Sen­ate pres­i­dent in 2007, Mon­tano has faith and con­fi­dence that the par­ty will bounce back.

Mon­tano said the PNM is re­flec­tive of the bal­isi­er flower, which can with­stand the harsh­est weath­er and nev­er dies.

He be­lieves Beck­les has what it takes to bring vic­to­ry home for the par­ty.

“I think so. But you know things have changed over the years. Pol­i­tics has changed.”

In Mon­tano’s view, Beck­les “is the right fit at this junc­tion.”

He said it’s left to be seen if Beck­les will do things that need to be done.

For for­mer PNM Vice Chair­man Robert Le Hunte, too much is be­ing made of the PNM’s con­sec­u­tive loss­es at the polls.

Ac­cord­ing to Le Hunte, what is oc­cur­ring now with­in the par­ty is the cul­mi­na­tion of a longer-term de­cline that be­gan sev­er­al years ago.

He said the par­ty’s com­pre­hen­sive loss at THA polls was down to a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors.

One of those fac­tors, he said, was the PNM’s de­ci­sion to adopt a dual lead­er­ship mod­el.

The for­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic util­i­ties said the mod­el left un­cer­tain­ty about po­lit­i­cal au­thor­i­ty.

“The PNM needs to do some in­tro­spec­tion. Look at all the rea­sons and re­tool and come back. I think that is what they are do­ing. I think the lead­er­ship style of Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is marked­ly dif­fer­ent from the style of Dr Row­ley. The ap­proach tak­en by her is dif­fer­ent. It is al­most di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­po­site. She is about col­lec­tive lead­er­ship. She is about work­ing with peo­ple. They have done that,” Le Hunte said.