GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning stayed away from the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pre-in­de­pen­dence event at Port-of-Spain City Hall yes­ter­day, as po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les used the oc­ca­sion to stress the need for uni­ty, re­spect and dis­ci­pline with­in the par­ty.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia why he did not at­tend the event, Man­ning said, “Pre­ferred qui­et time with my fam­i­ly.”

His ab­sence from the na­tion­al event fol­lows an­oth­er no­table skip over the week­end, when he was al­so miss­ing from a PNM me­dia con­fer­ence at Bal­isi­er House held dur­ing a vis­it by for­mer St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves.

Man­ning’s con­sec­u­tive ab­sences come against the back­drop of an es­ca­lat­ing dis­pute with­in the PNM, af­ter he voiced se­ri­ous con­cerns about the par­ty’s in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive over­sight, the im­prop­er for­ma­tion of lo­cal par­ty groups and un­ad­dressed cor­rup­tion claims.

The dis­pute sub­se­quent­ly trig­gered the mass res­ig­na­tion of the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

Speak­ing to mem­bers of the me­dia fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s in­de­pen­dence event, Beck­les re­ject­ed claims of an in­ter­nal par­ty rift, while em­pha­sis­ing the need for uni­ty and a long-term vi­sion as the na­tion pre­pared to cel­e­brate In­de­pen­dence Day.

Asked about Man­ning’s con­sec­u­tive ab­sences from re­cent me­dia events and par­ty meet­ings, Beck­les di­rect­ed ques­tions to the MP him­self.

How­ev­er, she down­played con­cerns about at­ten­dance, not­ing that over­all at­ten­dance among Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans re­mained strong and that it was un­like­ly every mem­ber would at­tend every event.

In her ad­dress to a packed au­di­ence yes­ter­day, Beck­les stressed that qui­et diplo­ma­cy and per­son­al dis­ci­pline must pre­vail over pub­lic po­lit­i­cal spats.

“I have nev­er be­lieved that every dis­agree­ment re­quires a pub­lic quar­rel, that every crit­i­cism de­serves re­tal­i­a­tion or that strength must an­nounce it­self through anger,” she said.

“My re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is larg­er than the noise around me. It is to re­main fo­cused on the peo­ple of T&T and on the se­ri­ous work our coun­try re­quires.”

Draw­ing a sharp con­trast be­tween per­for­ma­tive po­lit­i­cal bat­tles and con­struc­tive par­ty man­age­ment, Beck­les un­der­scored what she de­scribed as the eth­i­cal base­line of her lead­er­ship.

“My record has been built on in­tegri­ty, hu­mil­i­ty, ser­vice and diplo­ma­cy. Those prin­ci­ples will con­tin­ue to guide me. I will lis­ten. I will con­sult. I will make de­ci­sions.

“And when dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions must be made, I will make them with the se­ri­ous­ness that lead­er­ship de­mands—not to sat­is­fy the mo­ment, but to serve the coun­try. That is not sen­ti­men­tal pa­tri­o­tism. It is the be­gin­ning of se­ri­ous na­tion-build­ing,” she said.

Beck­les al­so high­light­ed his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, trac­ing some of those links to the coun­try’s first Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams.

She not­ed that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning at­tend­ed school with Gon­salves, while for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was present at yes­ter­day’s event, lived and worked in St Vin­cent as a vol­ca­nol­o­gist.

Gon­salves, she said, had shared in­sights on po­lit­i­cal re­silience, draw­ing on his own ex­pe­ri­ence of nav­i­gat­ing elec­toral de­feats and re­build­ing his par­ty.

“We were able to have some­one like him talk about a par­ty that has lost elec­tions, not just this time, but he talked about years ago when they lost elec­tions and how they were able to re­build. He was able to give some ad­vice on re­build­ing. He was able to talk about from time to time, you’re go­ing to have dif­fer­ences in the par­ty and how you can deal with it. At the end of the day, you have to de­cide what’s your fo­cus. Your fo­cus is the coun­try,” Beck­les said.

Gon­salves: Re­al lead­er­ship is more than in­spi­ra­tion

Gon­salves al­so used his ad­dress to ar­tic­u­late a broad­er vi­sion of po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship root­ed in un­lock­ing the hid­den po­ten­tial of a na­tion’s cit­i­zens.

He not­ed that while many be­lieve a leader’s pri­ma­ry du­ty is sim­ply to in­spire, true lead­er­ship re­quires a deep­er com­mit­ment to as­sess­ing the strengths and weak­ness­es of those be­ing led and help­ing them re­alise their po­ten­tial.

“A leader must not just in­spire,” Gon­salves said.

“To in­spire is not as dif­fi­cult as to make a sim­ple men­tion. A leader has to as­sess prop­er­ly the strengths and weak­ness­es, the lim­i­ta­tions and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of those whom he or she is lead­ing. And to draw out of the per­sons whom he or she is lead­ing the good­ness, the no­bil­i­ty and the high qual­i­ty.”

He stressed that a trans­for­ma­tion­al leader sees be­yond cur­rent cir­cum­stances to nur­ture qual­i­ties in in­di­vid­u­als that may still be dor­mant.

“To draw out of them good­ness, high qual­i­ty and no­bil­i­ty is the work of lead­er­ship, es­pe­cial­ly when the peo­ple whom you are lead­ing some­times do not as yet pos­sess those traits vis­i­bly,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to Gon­salves, in­spir­ing peo­ple is on­ly the first step in ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance. In­spi­ra­tion places the bur­den large­ly on what the leader projects out­ward, while re­al em­pow­er­ment oc­curs when a leader acts as a cat­a­lyst, help­ing cit­i­zens recog­nise their own ca­pac­i­ty for ex­cel­lence and col­lec­tive strength.

Gon­salves al­so is­sued a call for na­tion­al uni­ty, warn­ing against the dan­ger­ous po­lit­i­cal prac­tice of play­ing eth­nic groups against one an­oth­er.

Speak­ing on the in­her­ent com­plex­i­ties of build­ing a mod­ern so­ci­ety, he ar­gued that so­ci­etal fric­tion was a nat­ur­al con­di­tion of hu­man civil­i­sa­tion, but stressed that do­mes­tic in­sti­tu­tions—not di­vi­sion—must re­solve those con­flicts.

“And it’s like I al­ways point out there will be dis­so­nances. And how do we deal with those dis­so­nances? We deal with those from our cus­toms, our val­ues, our re­la­tions as peo­ples.

“And when we can’t solve those dis­so­nances in that way, we go to the Par­lia­ment or we go to the law courts, to for­mal in­sti­tu­tions. What we do not do is to pit one eth­nic group against each oth­er be­cause that is the po­si­tion of colo­nial­ism of the di­vide and rule,” he added.

Gon­salves said his role in Trinidad and To­ba­go was fo­cused on re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion, not do­mes­tic pol­i­tics.

He stressed that Cari­com lead­ers have im­por­tant work to do to­geth­er and main­tained that he had not in­volved him­self in the coun­try’s in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal af­fairs.