Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Jear­lean John is ac­cus­ing Dr Kei­th Row­ley of bul­ly­ing his MPs in­to unan­i­mous­ly sup­port­ing Stu­art Young to suc­ceed him as prime min­is­ter.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in San­gre Grande on Thurs­day night, John said she had in­side in­for­ma­tion that Row­ley strong-armed the MPs who ini­tial­ly sup­port­ed Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, to switch al­le­giances to Young.

“One day we were hear­ing it is nine to 11, be­cause you know in town there are some gangs called six and sev­en and in the PNM, they said it have nine and 11, I don’t know, al­leged­ly,” she told the crowd, ref­er­enc­ing that nine MPs had orig­i­nal­ly sup­port­ed Beck­les for the post of prime min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, she said that all changed dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 11.

“The next thing I heard, some big bul­ly went in­to a meet­ing and told them ‘Face the au­di­ence, al­lyuh know what hap­pen­ing here? Don’t play up in al­lyuh a...’ yes that is what I heard! There was a leak,” she al­leged.

She added, “And every man Jack had to go and sign, they ca­pit­u­lat­ed like a hand of bad cards.”

Fol­low­ing the PNM’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing, par­ty chair­man Young said the dis­cus­sions were cor­dial and the par­ty was more uni­fied than ever mov­ing for­ward.

“I’ve been in very good di­a­logue, in par­tic­u­lar with my col­leagues and many of my oth­er col­leagues, and what you’re see­ing here is what you’d ex­pect to see from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. What you’re see­ing here is his­toric. We’re pleased to tell T&T that what you’re go­ing to be see­ing is the roll-out of Team PNM,” Young said.

Asked how the nine MPs who sup­port­ed Beck­les were con­vinced to sup­port him, Young said, “I don’t re­al­ly think it was a mat­ter of ‘con­vinc­ing’, we had cer­tain dis­cus­sions, and we al­ways knew, I be­lieve, that we’d end up at this point, and it re­al­ly wasn’t a mat­ter of con­vinc­ing—this is ex­act­ly where I ex­pect­ed us as the PNM to end up.”

But on Thurs­day night, John said the MPs even­tu­al­ly “ca­pit­u­lat­ed and col­lapsed!”

She said the elec­torate should see this as ev­i­dence that PNM MPs stand for noth­ing and will there­fore not be ac­cept­able rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Par­lia­ment.

“If Pen­ny (Beck­les) not stand­ing for her­self, she will stand for you? If Fos­ter Cum­mings not stand­ing for him­self, who he will stand for? If (Roger) Mon­roe not stand­ing for him­self, who are they stand­ing for? Who are they com­ing to? What will they tell us?” she asked.

John added, “You stand when you be­lieve your cause is right, you stand when you be­lieve your cause is just and you stand in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple. So, if they will not stand for us, will you stand for them?”