PNM St Joseph constituency suspended

The PNM St Joseph constituency has been fully suspended and a new executive is to be established, in accordance with the recommendations of a three-man investigative committee. That committee, chaired by Telly Paul, advised that the current executive be disbanded and replaced and that the members of the former executive be debarred from holding office on the new executive for five years. The findings of the committee were presented at a meeting on Thursday night at the Mount Hope Junior Secondary School by general secretary Martin Joseph. The investigative committee which comprised Paul, Lennox Rattansingh and Brenda McCree Hunt had been appointed in March by the General Council after infighting in the St Joseph executive proved to be too intractable a problem.

PNM officials worried that St Joseph , now deemed to be a winnable seat for the PNM under the new boundary adjustments by the Elections and Boundaries Commission, was slipping into massive chaos and confusion. There was a sharp split in the executive with one faction supporting honorary MP Sharon Gopaul-McNicholls and the other side firmly against her. Things had gotten so bad that poison pen letters had circulated. The General Council in March suspended the executive pending the findings of the investigative committee. Sources said yesterday that the party was in the process of putting together the new executive.

The old executive consisted of Winston Williams, Brenda Stewart, Andrew Young, Raymond Olliverre, Deborah Ottley, Zawaba Ali-Sootoo, Malcolm Cain, Alicia Bartholew, Abigail Bruno, Saheed Mohammed, Laurel Barneell, Kurt Francis and Gopaul-McNicholls as an ex-officio member. This is not the first time internal bickering has led to the suspension of the St Joseph executive. In the 1986-1991 period, the St Joseph executive under the chairmanship of St Elmo Gopaul, (Gopaul-McNicholls’ father) was suspended after a decision was taken to send in Keith Rowley then deputy political leader to investigate the problems in the constituency.

Sources said much of the current squabbling on the executive centred around Gopaul-Mc Nicholls, who  was candidate for the area in the last two elections and who as honorary MP, continues to nurse the constituency and to exert considerable influence. Sources stated that the decision to disband the executive for five years would mean that Gopaul-McNicholl’s influence would be reduced. Coordinator for the constituency is Tourism Minister Howard Chin Lee.