Michelle Loubon

Leader of Op­po­si­tion busi­ness in the Sen­ate Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment will have to "re­turn to the draw­ing board."

Beck­les made this com­ment in light of the loss of the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Ari­ma had al­so vot­ed in favour of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Beck­les said: "We have to go back to the draw­ing board and do our home­work. We ac­knowl­edge the vic­to­ry of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. We ac­cept our de­feat. We have to do our work and take it from there."

Based on the May 24 elec­tion, Beck­les not­ed, "I was al­ways con­scious, it would have not been an easy win for us. When you do it sep­a­rate­ly, you get dif­fer­ent re­sults. But when you have the com­bined votes of the UNC/COP, it's dif­fer­ent. "I was con­scious if they were go­ing un­der one ban­ner it would not have been easy for us...It was a much big­ger chal­lenge," she said. The COP cap­tured six out of the sev­en seats.