Manning challenges PNM inquiry and objects to process for constituency elections

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has put arrange­ments in place for San Fer­nan­do East par­ty group elec­tions to start last Fri­day (Sep­tem­ber 4) and run un­til Oc­to­ber 10, to­wards the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions. How­ev­er, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has re­ject­ed the process and sought a sus­pen­sion un­til he re­ceives in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing why 15 par­ty groups were omit­ted.

This was con­firmed by PNM ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials af­ter last Fri­day’s spe­cial Gen­er­al Coun­cil held to con­firm the re­port of a team ver­i­fy­ing SFE par­ty groups. Man­ning’s con­cerns had in­clud­ed ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The team’s re­port was ex­am­ined by PNM’s Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive last Wednes­day.

This fol­lowed the PNM lead­er­ship’s ef­forts to re­solve ten­sions in the SFE unit be­tween Man­ning and Alex­is. In June, both lodged com­plaints against each oth­er about the run­ning of the con­stituen­cy, in­clud­ing Man­ning’s con­cern about a by-elec­tion which was im­prop­er­ly held. PNM deputy lead­ers Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus and San­jiv Bood­hu were among a pan­el that in­ves­ti­gat­ed their claims and ob­tained no proof of the cor­rup­tion Man­ning al­leged.