PM: I coming with my own slate

PRIME Minister Dr Keith Rowley has announced that he would not only be seeking re-election as the PNM's political leader but will be fielding his own slate of candidates in the party’s internal elections scheduled for September 30.

“On the 30th of September, this party will be called upon under the one man one vote system to vote for who you want, not just to lead the party but to be the executive to run this party. I am putting you on notice that I intend to put my name forward to lead the PNM into the next term,” Rowley said yesterday.

Addressing the PNM sports and family day at the Edinburgh 500 recreation ground in Chaguanas, Rowley told the crowd that while they had a right to vote for their candidate of choice, he also has a right to prevent “imps” whose only purpose is to destroy the party, from being elected.

"I want to say to you though the same way you have a right to vote for anybody you want to run this party, I have a right to prevent you from electing into the party executive imps who will damage this party.” Without identifying any person, Rowley said there were members who had retained their membership but who had “nothing good to say about the party” for the past seven years.

However, he promised that unlike the last election when he had not publicly called out anyone, Rowley pledged he would not stay silent but would meet them head on in the “election square.” He said his slate of candidates would also be fielded in order to prevent "the wrong persons" from being elected into the executive.

“In 2018 I am having a slate and I am putting it to you and I am asking you to support that slate,” Rowley said. In what seemed to be the start of the campaign, Rowley also addressed several national issues such as Petrotrin saying the ailing oil company has to be restructured into a “smaller, leaner, and more profitable entity”, but noted workers would not be “thrown on the pavement."

He also had some words of advice for public servants saying they can either chose to follow PSA president Watson Duke or the government which has ensured they received a pay packet at the end of the month