March 1981 Eric Williams died. Williams had maintained an iron grip over the party and forced all potential rivals out of the party. In the absence of a clear successor, President Ellis Clarke was left to choose the new Prime Minister from among the three Deputy Political Leaders of the party. Clarke appointed George Chambers Prime Minister in preference to Kamaluddin Mohammed and Errol Mahabir. Chambers was subsequently elected as Political Leader of the PNM and led the party to victory in the 1981 General Elections. The PNM won 26 of 36 seats and 52% of the vote. It subsequently held on to power until 1986 when it was defeated by the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) under the leadership of A.N.R. Robinson. The PNM won three of 36 seats with 32% of the vote. Chambers resigned and was succeeded by Patrick Manning as Political Leader. Manning and the PNM re-invented When Manning became leader he promised a "new PNM" and purposely ignored the discredited old guard. He appointed Wendell Mottley, Keith Rowley and Augustus Ramrekersingh as his deputy leaders. The PNM was returned to power in the 1991 elections after the NAR self-destructed. In the 1991 election it won 21 of 36 seats with 45% of the vote. However, in the latter half of that term the party became unstable. It lost one seat in a by-election and another when Ralph Maraj defected to the United National Congress. The issue that led Maraj to defect was the declaration of a limited State of Emergency which sole purpose was to remove Occah Seepaul (Maraj's sister) as Speaker of the House of Representatives. The party also suffered a loss of support with the death Minister of Public Utilities, Morris Marshall, a favourite of the party grassroots. Attempting to halt the decline in party support Manning called an early "snap election" in 1995 . Many party front-benchers did not seek reelection including Finance Minister Wendell Mottley. The party lost the 1995 General Elections winning 17 of 36 seats with 48% of the vote. The United National Congress (UNC) under the leadership of Basdeo Panday also won 17 seats and formed a coalition government with the National Alliance for Reconstruction which had won the remaining two seats. The PNM was further weakened when two MPs resigned from the party and threw their support behind the UNC government. This led to numerous calls for