An­na-Lisa Paul

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Es­mond Forde re­tained the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy in this year’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion with a to­tal of 9,409 votes. How­ev­er, in 2015 Forde had ce­ment­ed his win with a wider mar­gin and a to­tal of 11, 228 votes against UNC’s can­di­date Wayne Munroe who got 7,613 votes.

This elec­tion, Forde emerged vic­to­ri­ous over his clos­est com­peti­tor–the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s (UNC) David Nakhid who se­cured 7,326 votes.

Cel­e­brat­ing with his loy­al sup­port­ers just af­ter 10 o’clock last night at his con­stituen­cy of­fice along the East­ern Main Road, Tu­na­puna, Forde thanked God for spar­ing his life to see yet an­oth­er vic­to­ry, the PNM’s Po­lit­i­cal Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley for be­liev­ing in him, and his loy­al sup­port­ers in that or­der.

Sur­round­ed by par­ty loy­al­ists and old school­mates, Forde said al­though it was a long cam­paign and one which was dif­fer­ent as it was un­der re­stric­tions as a re­sult of COVID-19, it had been worth it.

He said, “We fo­cused on our cam­paign and not the Op­po­si­tion. We did it our way and max­imised on our strengths.”

Forde cred­it­ed for­mer min­is­ter Ed­die Hart for al­so sup­port­ing his cam­paign.

Asked what was ahead for the next five years, Forde said while he al­ready has an agen­da, his main fo­cus would be the con­struc­tion of a “vir­gin road from Tacarigua in­to Tu­na­puna, across the Cau­ra Riv­er with a bridge.”

He said an­oth­er im­por­tant task was help­ing to im­prove the youths in his area and in­creas­ing agri­cul­ture pro­duc­tion in the Cau­ra Val­ley and Mt St Bene­dict.

Asked if they had en­coun­tered any prob­lems dur­ing the vot­ing process, Forde said there were three in­stances dur­ing which vot­ers were al­lowed to leave the polling sta­tions with their signed poll slips. He dis­missed com­plaints that the UNC had placed posters close to one of the polling sta­tions as he said, “Peo­ple’s minds were al­ready made up as to who they were vot­ing for.”

He al­so de­nied claims by the UNC that both he and Hart had been can­vass­ing in the vicin­i­ty of Hillview Col­lege. “Hillview Col­lege is my old school. When I went up there to­day (yes­ter­day), I met one or two friends I knew from Hillview and we were just talk­ing. I don’t need to cam­paign to­day (yes­ter­day). My cam­paign end­ed on Sat­ur­day.”

Late-night cel­e­bra­tions by Forde and his sup­port­ers were damp­ened af­ter the po­lice in­ter­rupt­ed to cau­tion peo­ple about the need for so­cial dis­tanc­ing and wear­ing masks.

Mean­while, at Nakhid’s con­stituen­cy of­fice a short dis­tance away, the dis­ap­point­ment was ev­i­dent on the faces of the peo­ple who lined both sides of the road.

Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment that he had not got­ten the man­date from the elec­torate, Nakhid said, “We are heart­ened by the in­roads we have made and we are very con­fi­dent that the tide will turn very very soon, that the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will stop vot­ing based on eth­nic lines like they have in this elec­tion.”

He ex­pressed hope that a true na­tion­al uni­ty gov­ern­ment could one day rep­re­sent T&T again.

In­di­cat­ing that he had been bit­ten by the po­lit­i­cal bug, Nakhid said, “I love how I was able to rep­re­sent the peo­ple of this con­stituen­cy. I think we made some progress against a very large num­ber deficit from 2015, so I look for­ward to fight­ing again for the peo­ple of T&T in the fu­ture.”

Nakhid ac­knowl­edged that while it had been a tough fight to gain ground along the east/west Cor­ri­dor, it was a feat they had man­aged to achieve.

He said it was now time for the par­ty to re­flect on all that has hap­pened. Nakhid pledged his al­le­giance to the UNC and its po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.