JAN­NELLE BERNARD

Se­nior Re­porter

jan­nelle.bernard@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer PNM mem­ber and MP Karen Nunez-Tesheira is not con­vinced that all is well with­in the walls of the par­ty.

Nunez-Tesheira, who is now the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of HOPE, said the re­cent show of sol­i­dar­i­ty af­ter the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Sat­ur­day, where all 21 mem­bers sup­port­ed Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young to be­come the next prime min­is­ter, may just be a mat­ter of self-preser­va­tion.

“The per­sons who will dis­sent, for want of a bet­ter word, or who are not in sup­port of Mr Young, and I sus­pect there may be more, they are right now in­ter­est­ed in get­ting in­to Par­lia­ment. And for them to come out and to con­tin­ue to ob­ject to his be­ing the prime min­is­ter of the coun­try, once Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley steps down, cer­tain­ly is not in their in­ter­est when nom­i­na­tion day has arisen. So you need to get in­to the House,” she claimed.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Nunez-Tesheira de­scribed Yong as a “clone” of the Prime Min­is­ter, adding he (Young) is not the pop­u­lar choice, but the one that is use­ful to Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt in any­body’s mind that the Prime Min­is­ter is in­tent on hav­ing his way, not in the in­ter­est of the coun­try, not in the in­ter­est of the par­ty, but in his own in­ter­est to put some­one there that is his own clone, that is his choice, and that he be­lieves will con­tin­ue to do his bid­ding and run the par­ty as he sees it.”

Nunez-Tesheira re­signed from the PNM in Au­gust 2023, af­ter claim­ing democ­ra­cy was un­der threat un­der the Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion. She con­test­ed the post of PNM po­lit­i­cal leader in De­cem­ber 2022 un­suc­cess­ful­ly. She was the for­mer D’Abadie/O’Meara MP and fi­nance min­is­ter from 2007 to 2010.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, she said she be­lieves if it were left to the en­tire mem­ber­ship, Young would not have been the choice.

“It not on­ly seems un­prin­ci­pled, it seems a per­son de­ter­mined to have his own way, and is de­ter­mined to do that. And in such a way that the par­ty, who should be the one to make the de­ci­sion on the par­ty lead­er­ship, be­cause once that de­ci­sion is made, I doubt that very much that MrY­oung would be se­lect­ed. More like­ly, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les (Robin­son), more like­ly, Fos­ter Cum­mings, but cer­tain­ly not him.”

Last Mon­day, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley an­nounced that Young was se­lect­ed by a vote of 11-9 to be prime min­is­ter when he steps down from of­fice, dur­ing a To­ba­go re­treat by the PNM’s par­lia­men­tary cau­cus.