PEOPLE’S National Movement (PNM) founding member Ferdie Ferreira says Trinidad and Tobago does not have a history of voluntary political resignations.

As such, he said, the Prime Minister’s decision to seek to retain the leadership of the PNM in the party’s internal election in September is not surprising.

“We have to first recognise what power is about and history has proven that very few incumbents if any, particularly when they are serving at the highest level of the political arena, presidents and prime ministers, except where there is a constitutional restriction, very few give up that prestigious and powerful institution,” Ferreira told Sunday Newsday.

“So, what the prime minister has done is nothing new. We do not have a history in this country of voluntary resignations. The incumbents seldom think of it when they are in Opposition far less when they are in power. So, the prime minister’s decision to continue and make himself available as leader of the party is not unusual, nothing strange.”

In a newspaper interview last Sunday, Dr Rowley said he had a responsibility to fulfil his mandate after being elected in the general election for the term 2020 to 2025.

“I have a responsibility to complete the mandate that the electorate gave me but I can only do so by being the PNM leader,” Rowley was quoted in the article as saying.

“My term of office as PNM leader ends this year so there will be an internal election and to serve out my mandate as prime minister I am obligated to seek an extension of my term as political leader of the PNM.”

In 2018, Rowley received an overwhelming mandate to continue as the party’s leader for a third consecutive term. But after the PNM’s 22-19 victory over the United National Congress in the 2020 general election, he had hinted that the current four-year term might be his last in politics.

In his victory speech at Balisier House, he had told supporters, “I’m not one of those politicians who believe that when you come into office you go out feet first.”

Rowley added he had “places to go and people to see,” but felt he had a commitment to ensure that the new term is a period of transition for the PNM.

“As the longest-serving member of Parliament...I have a duty and responsibility during this term to fashion the PNM’s future by ensuring our young people are developed in such a way that when I am no longer in a position to announce an election victory, that the country will not be deprived of the leadership that it deserves.”

Rowley, who turned 72 on October 24, 2021, has been a parliamentarian since 1987.

On the question of leadership, Ferreira said it is hardly likely that any possible challenger to Rowley will win.

“Politics, like cricket, is a game of glorious uncertainties and they will always have ambitious idiots.”

He recalled Rowley had unsuccessfully challenged Manning for leadership in 1996 despite the fact that the latter was the Opposition Leader at the time.

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