As the governing People's National Movement (PNM) gets ready for an election on May 24, it is facing some uphill battles from its own supporters who are openly demonstrating their displeasure about candidate selection for the vote. One of the people who continues to have strong support is Pennelope Beckles who has been rejected by the party in favour of Laurel Lezama.
Supporters of Beckles have been staging loud demonstrations at the party's Balisier House headquarters to make the point that they don't approve of the way their preferred candidate has been treated.
Beckles was offered a diplomatic post in lieu of the Arima seat but she turned that down.
In Tobago East Rennie Dumas has pulled out, leaving the party with a free hand to choose a candidate for the seat.
Dumas struggled to win his seat in 2007 in a contest involving two opposition parties from Trinidad and a TUF/DAC alliance. The combined vote for the opposition was 4,722; Dumas won with 5,601 votes, a margin of 879 votes. In 2010, COP and the UNC won't be contesting the two Tobago seats.
The opposition candidates will come from the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP) led by Ashworth Jack.
PNM Chairman Conrad Enill has been facing some tough opposition in his bid to fight one of the Port of Spain seats. Party supporters in the stronghold of St Ann's East have told the PNM they don't want Enill as their candidate.
They are lobbying for Anthony Roberts. “We want Roberts. We want Roberts,” a crowd of supporters chanted outside Balsier House Thursday. They warned the party that they would not vote PNM if Roberts is not the candidate.
“No Roberts , no vote...St Ann’s East is not for sale,” they said. “We don’t want no Enill here; no Enill here,” was the message they shouted to the party.
Roberts has been a strong supporter of former cabinet minister Dr Keith Rowley, who is on record as saying that the PNM administration under Prime Minister Patrick Manning has one of the most corrupt ever.
Despite that Rowley has won the nomination for the Diego Martin West constituency that he represented in the 9th Parliament that was dissolved on April 8.
Like Beckles, Roberts has turned down a lucrative post as an incentive to withdraw from the nomination process. In the case of Beckles even PNM stalwart Ferdie Ferreira turned up at Balisier House to identify with the protest in support of the former Arima MP, local media reported.
1 comment:
People power is talking against the wishes of leaders. Will we be seeing this in the UNC ? The Political Leader is yet to quiet the infantile protests in some quarters.
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