For­mer PNM min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning’s de­ci­sion to en­ter the po­lit­i­cal fray at this time and seek the San Fer­nan­do East chair­man­ship is strate­gic and well timed, and demon­strates the dri­ven sta­bil­i­ty she rep­re­sent­ed as a min­is­ter and along­side her late hus­band, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed has said.

Com­ment­ing on de­vel­op­ments in the PNM’s San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy, Mo­hammed said he had sug­gest­ed fol­low­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion that the par­ty should con­front its is­sues head-on, un­rav­el com­pli­ca­tions and re­build.

“They ig­nored the sug­ges­tion. Fif­teen months lat­er, the PNM’s still strug­gling to find its foot­ing. It’s a phe­nom­e­non that’s rare for PNM. It’s what hap­pens when a par­ty dis­cards its in­sti­tu­tion­al hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty: the neo­phytes that en­tered pol­i­tics in 2015 en­joyed first and, in some in­stances, sec­ond op­por­tu­ni­ty in a play­ground called gov­ern­ment,” Mo­hammed said.