Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment con­tin­ued this year's vic­to­ry streak in yes­ter­day's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, win­ning eight re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, in­clud­ing re­tak­ing five it had lost in the 2010 lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls."We have won this elec­tion, we are on the way to win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion...the Prime Min­is­ter should call the gen­er­al elec­tion now, hav­ing lost her man­date," PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley said at 10 pm at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, though los­ing over­all to the PNM, re­tained at least five UNC "heart­land" cor­po­ra­tions and staved off ad­ver­sary Jack Warn­er's In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty."The UNC has re­tained its base," a beam­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar said at 9.30 pm, speak­ing along­side suc­cess­ful can­di­dates in Siparia."We've held our base. This isn't a Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion vic­to­ry, it's a true peo­ple's vic­to­ry."

This is the Part­ner­ship's third suc­ces­sive de­feat af­ter the Jan­u­ary To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tion, which the PNM won, and the Ju­ly Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion won by Warn­er.Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Warn­er's ILP, which failed to cap­ture any cor­po­ra­tions, won on­ly two of the eight seats in the Ch­agua­nas bor­ough and his Fe­lic­i­ty strong­hold in Ch­agua­nas West re­turned to the UNC.

Of the re­main­ing six Ch­agua­nas seats, the PP and the PNM each took three.ILP chair­man Robin Mon­tano con­ced­ed over­all de­feat as ear­ly as 9 pm, say­ing, "The re­sults show the coun­try has re­treat­ed to trib­al­ism...so we have failed. It's clear from the re­sults we didn't win. But we'll try again to­mor­row."Warn­er lat­er said the ILP has be­come T&T's third po­lit­i­cal force, is "here to stay" and would con­tin­ue build­ing.

The PNM, which last con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions pri­or to 2010, yes­ter­day re­turned to ma­jor­i­ty con­trol in a trend es­tab­lished as ear­ly as 8.15 pm, when the par­ty took the Diego Mar­tin re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion. For­mer UNC cor­po­ra­tion chair­man An­tho­ny Sam­my con­ced­ed at that time.

Re­sults by cor­po­ra­tion

The PNM re­tained Port-of Spain, San Juan/Laven­tille and Point Fortin and re-took the cor­po­ra­tions of Diego Mar­tin, Tu­na­puna, Ari­ma, San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do, which the PP won in 2010.The PNM al­so picked up seats and in­creased votes in what were tra­di­tion­al­ly non-PNM ar­eas. Row­ley par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ed the PNM's win in Ch­agua­nas.The 11 cor­po­ra­tions the PP won in 2010 fell to five: Pe­nal/Debe, Siparia, Princes Town, Rio Claro/Ma­yaro, and Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro.

What next in Ch­agua­nas?

The fo­cus now falls on Ch­agua­nas, where both the PP and PNM won three seats.The ILP, which won two seats, holds the bal­ance of pow­er there. ILP's sup­port yes­ter­day came main­ly from north Ca­roni. How­ev­er, there was a swing back to the UNC in Fe­lic­i­ty, which was Warn­er's strong­hold in Ch­agua­nas West.

PNM pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi told the T&T Guardian that while the PP and the PNM picked up three seats each, the PNM re­ceived the most votes and there­fore po­ten­tial­ly could con­trol the Ch­agua­nas cor­po­ra­tion.UNC par­ty of­fi­cials said there might be some "lever­ag­ing" for con­trol of that cor­po­ra­tion. But they didn't be­lieve the UNC would want to link with the ILP.

On whether the ILP would form an al­liance with the PNM, chair­man Mon­tano told the T&T Guardian, "If I had my way, the an­swer would be no. But the par­ty hasn't met on this. But as far as I'm con­cerned, I'd say no."

Vot­ing to­day in Point

While the PNM won seats in Point Fortin, last night's out­come is mi­nus re­sults for two of the six polling sta­tions in Point Fortin, af­ter the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion sus­pend­ed vot­ing at a Guapo and a Ma­haica polling sta­tion af­ter find­ing a num­ber of elec­tors had vot­ed us­ing the wrong bal­lot pa­pers. Vot­ing will re­sume at the two sta­tions to­day from 6 am to 6 pm.

EBC chief elec­tions of­fi­cer Ramesh Nanan said the pro­ce­dure of do­ing the vote on an­oth­er day was not un­prece­dent­ed, since a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent oc­curred in the 2003 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice failed to win any of the 16 seats among sev­en cor­po­ra­tions the par­ty con­test­ed. Nor did any of the two small­er par­ties or four in­de­pen­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed.

Elec­tions by num­bers

Rain put a damper on yes­ter­day's elec­tions, which saw a very low vot­er turnout.Pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates put the turn-out around 263,000 out of Trinidad's 1,036, 721 elec­torate. EBC stat­ed it would give an of­fi­cial fig­ure to­day.Af­ter lines ear­li­er in the morn­ing at some venues, by 1.50 pm yes­ter­day a 22 per cent turn out was re­port­ed in some places, with a surge in the evening.There was high po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty through­out Trinidad for the ex­er­cise.

Pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures in­di­cat­ed the PNM re­ceived ap­prox­i­mate­ly 116,000 votes na­tion­al­ly, to the PP's 84,000 and the ILP, 62,000.The EBC's Nanan said on the ba­sis of last night's re­sults, the EBC will work out the al­lo­ca­tion of the 56 al­der­men for the re­spec­tive cor­po­ra­tions over the next three to four days us­ing the math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­la un­der the new pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion sys­tem.

PNM pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures

Ari­ma: 7/7 seats

Diego Mar­tin: 10/10

PoS: 12/12

San Fer­nan­do: 8/9

San Juan/Laven­tille: 12/13

San­gre Grande: 5/8

Tu­na­puna: 11/15

Point Fortin: 4/6

(two more polling sta­tions to vote to­day)