AS SHE addressed the country after being announced as the PNM’s new Opposition Leader on April 30, Pennelope Beckles-Robinson, 63, adopted the right tone. There was no grandstanding. There was no spin of the election result.
Mrs Beckles-Robinson even acknowledged her own usually robust margin of victory in Arima shrunk. She said she had no objection to meeting with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. It was all on point.
Ms Beckles-Robinson’s new leadership role has been a long time – some would say too long – coming.
It follows stints as leader of opposition business in the Senate from 2010-2013 and as deputy speaker from 2007-2010. It also follows decades of service in a range of portfolios, including Minister of Social Development, Minister of Culture and Tourism, Minister of Public Utilities and the Environment, Minister of Housing and Urban Development and Minister of Planning and Development. A graduate of St Joseph’s Convent, San Fernando, she is a part of an eminent class of leaders who attended UWI.
Yet for all that, the new Opposition Leader has often had to walk a rocky path within Balisier House.
Patrick Manning dropped her as the Arima candidate in 2010. Dr Keith Rowley dropped her as senate leader in 2013. Her 2014 bid to challenge Rowley for leadership failed. She was rejected when she screened for Arima in 2015. For a moment, Rowley seemed to banish her abroad, giving her the bauble of a diplomatic post in 2016.
He brought her back into the cabinet fold in 2022, yet preferred Stuart Young as his successor. She narrowly lost a straw poll to Mr Young a few months ago.
This week’s stinging election defeat – which has seen Rowley and Young resign their party posts – is a vindication for Ms Beckles-Robinson’s perseverance. She becomes only the first female PNM Opposition Leader, assuming the position at a rare moment when the PM and President are also female.
But history-making aside, the new role will hardly be a bed of roses.
Ms Beckles-Robinson takes over the reins of one of the weakest oppositions ever. Her MPs will not be needed to pass special-majority legislation. A third ascendant force, the TPP, further crowds them out. It is also not certain the PNM will install her as an interim or substantive party leader.
Not all MPs initially signed a letter that circulated this week backing her. Mr Manning’s son, Brian, is calling for the removal of the one-man-one-vote convention process.
Ms Beckles-Robinson feels it is certain that the PNM can recover and return to power. But the mess and fallout suggest it will be a challenge, notwithstanding her personal resilience, for that recovery to happen anytime soon.
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