Trinidad: Rowley fires Marlene as deputy PNM political leader

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Min­is­ter and Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Dr Kei­th Row­ley has re­voked the ap­point­ment of Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald as the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM.

Dr Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment via his Face­book page.

“As The Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, I have to­day re­voked the ap­point­ment of Ms Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald as Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the PNM,” the state­ment said.

Mc­Don­ald was one of four deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the PNM, to­geth­er with the THA Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and par­ty stal­wart Joan Yuille-Williams.

Mc­Don­ald was re­moved as Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion on Mon­day, with the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounc­ing that Prime Min­is­ter DR Kei­th Row­ley would take up the port­fo­lio.

The new po­si­tion was ini­tial­ly ear­marked for Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Garvin Si­mon­ette but the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny was ‘post­poned’ in light of new min­is­ter in light of ‘new in­for­ma­tion’.

Short­ly af­ter the gov­ern­ment had an­nounced its de­ci­sion to ap­point Si­mon­ette as Mc­Don­ald’s re­place­ment, pic­tures be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing of a 2014 mugshot of Si­mon­ette from the Bre­vard Coun­ty’s po­lice of­fi­cer in Ok­la­homa, USA.

The ar­rest record said the book­ing re­lates to a charge for dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence.

Si­mon­ette re­signed as a Sen­a­tor Mon­day af­ter­noon.