Gail Alexan­der

Trinidad and To­ba­go wakes up this morn­ing to a his­toric new chap­ter be­ing writ­ten by its first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar af­ter her coali­tion Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) won yes­ter­day's gen­er­al elec­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, 58, steered her PP to vic­to­ry in yes­ter­day's polls, ex­act­ly four months af­ter she as­sumed UNC lead­er­ship on Jan­u­ary 24 of the par­ty found­ed and pre­vi­ous­ly led by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

The coun­try's next gov­ern­ment will be formed to­day from the PP's five-mem­ber ag­gre­ga­tion. This com­pris­es the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee and To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple. PP leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who will be T&T's sev­enth Prime Min­is­ter, de­clared vic­to­ry at UNC's Rien­zi Com­plex head­quar­ters last night. De­feat­ed PNM leader, Patrick Man­ning con­ced­ed at 10.38 pm last night, say­ing he would now have to con­sid­er his fu­ture in pol­i­tics. Man­ning, a three-term Prime Min­is­ter, had led the PNM in gov­ern­ment since 2001.

Man­ning, who won his San Fer­nan­do East seat, said: "I do not know which seats we have won and what we have lost...the fi­nal fig­ures are not in. What I do know is that we have lost the elec­tion and have there­fore con­ced­ed." Ad­dress­ing PN­Mites at Bal­isi­er House, Man­ning said the re­sult was not the end of the world. "We in the PNM be­lieve in democ­ra­cy–the peo­ple have spo­ken," he said. "The voice of the peo­ple is the voice of almighty God. Ac­cept the re­sults and I ac­cept full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for it."

Man­ning said the PNM would to­day analyse the event and would short­ly there­after call its Gen­er­al Coun­cil to­geth­er "for ap­pro­pri­ate dis­cus­sions." "One of the things of course, I will now have to con­sid­er is my fu­ture in pol­i­tics," he said. "I can as­sure you of one thing though...the best de­ci­sion will be tak­en in the in­ter­est of the PNM." Man­ning said he would re­turn to his house in San Fer­nan­do as soon as pos­si­ble. He said his house was al­ways va­cant and he can move in­to the house to­day if nec­es­sary.

In last night's re­sults, the UNC held on to its orig­i­nal 15 seats, al­so pick­ing up a num­ber of seats for­mer­ly held by the PNM, in­clud­ing in the East-West Cor­ri­dor, a PNM strong­hold. The PNM orig­i­nal­ly held 26 seats. The PP group­ing took an ear­ly lead in a swing of key seats–held by PNM– deemed to to be mar­gin­al, as well as oth­er seats. These in­clud­ed To­ba­go East and West, Pointe-a-Pierre, St Joseph, Tu­na­puna, Moru­ga/Table­land, St Ann's East, San Fer­nan­do West, Lopinot Bon Air West and Ari­ma. The COP part­ner in the PP won sev­er­al seats in the E/W cor­ri­dor in­clud­ing Tu­na­puna which COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an wrest­ed from the PNM. Dook­er­an thanked PNM sup­port­ers for con­tribut­ing to his vic­to­ry. He said the over­all po­lit­i­cal vic­to­ry was five years in the mak­ing.

To­ba­go East, which had been held by the PNM, was the first seat to be de­clared at 8.55 pm. This was fol­lowed by To­ba­go West. PNM's To­ba­go leader Orville Lon­don con­ced­ed both seats at 9.15 pm be­fore Man­ning con­ced­ed. Lon­don told T&T Guardian last night: "I'm dis­ap­point­ed that we lost the two seats but we recog­nise what the is­sues are. How­ev­er, I con­grat­u­late the win­ning can­di­dates." Lon­don said the is­sues in To­ba­go were the same as they were in Trinidad. To­ba­go had al­so been in­stru­men­tal in fa­cil­i­tat­ing the Gov­ern­ment in 1995 when the UNC had tak­en pow­er in an arrange­ment with the NAR. There was great ju­bi­la­tion at the UNC's Rien­zi Com­plex head­quar­ters from 9.30 pm last night when the win­ning trend was es­tab­lished. How­ev­er, the at­mos­phere at the PNM's Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters was more sub­dued. The fi­nal re­vised vot­ers' list to­talled 1,040,128 vot­ers.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion es­ti­mat­ed yes­ter­day's vot­er-turnout at around 70 per cent. A to­tal of 99 can­di­dates from five par­ties and three in­de­pen­dents con­test­ed yes­ter­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's PP had pledged a 32-point im­me­di­ate ac­tion plan of im­prove­ments across every sphere from ed­u­ca­tion and wa­ter to busi­ness to be im­ple­ment­ed with­in 120 days of as­sump­tion to of­fice. An­oth­er of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's con­sis­tent de­c­la­ra­tions since her as­sump­tion to UNC lead­er­ship and dur­ing the cam­paign was her in­sis­tence that the me­dia be the watch­dogs of democ­ra­cy in T&T. Can­di­dates are re­quired to ob­tain one eighth (12.5 per cent) of the num­ber of votes polled in each seat in or­der to be re­fund­ed their $5,000 de­posit. The coun­try's 20th gen­er­al elec­tion ex­er­cise was free from vi­o­lence. How­ev­er, the PNM and Op­po­si­tion had com­plaints on sev­er­al is­sues.