Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Promis­ing to be the change the T&T needs, the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front is gear­ing up to run in the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and it will have a for­mer prime min­is­ter as its cam­paign man­ag­er.

The an­nounce­ment was made yes­ter­day by po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day at the par­ty’s head of­fice lo­cat­ed at Marie Street in Ch­agua­nas.

Ac­cord­ing to Pan­day, “We rec­og­nize that peo­ple are fed up with the re­cy­cling of the same politi­cians every five years and so we will con­test the elec­tion with new, vi­brant, in­tel­li­gent, hon­est and com­mit­ted peo­ple”.

She in­di­cat­ed that a com­mit­tee of ex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple like her fa­ther Bas­deo Pan­day will not on­ly men­tor the can­di­dates but al­so spear­head the elec­tion cam­paign.

As of now, Mick­ela Pan­day said the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front wants to con­test all 41 con­stituen­cies but, she ad­mit­ted dis­cus­sions are be­ing held with oth­er po­lit­i­cal forces which means plans can change.

“I don’t want to sound as if we are not still talk­ing with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and will­ing to lis­ten to oth­er par­ties and move the best way for­ward,” she stat­ed.

Now that the par­ty’s nom­i­na­tions are open, Pan­day con­firmed she will be throw­ing her hat in the ring. How­ev­er, she is tight-lipped on which con­stituen­cy she has her eyes on.

Al­so present at yes­ter­day’s press con­fer­ence was lo­cal foot­baller Ken­wyne Jones. Asked what role Jones played in the par­ty’s elec­tion fight, Pan­day said he was part of the team and the coun­try has to wait to find out more.

The elec­tion date is yet to be an­nounced but the young Pan­day said she is op­ti­mistic the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front has enough time to pre­pare its slate of can­di­dates and cam­paign.

She said, “We have done a sta­tis­ti­cal study of the vot­ing pat­tern in this coun­try us­ing the EBC and the CSO sta­tis­tics and the vot­ing pat­tern shows that of the two ma­jor par­ties put to­geth­er less than 50 per cent of the en­tire elec­torate votes for them”.

It is the group of peo­ple who do not vote, Pan­day said she is hop­ing to cap­ture.

As for the par­ty’s fi­nanciers, the po­lit­i­cal leader said there are none and as­sured that its fi­nan­cial records will be made pub­lic.

She stat­ed, “With­out com­plete­ly giv­ing it away but in the in­ter­est of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, the best way to go is by go­ing con­stituen­cy to con­stituen­cy”.

The par­ty’s man­i­festo, which will be un­veiled soon, will ad­dress is­sues such as, the COVID-19 cri­sis, ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, lack of food se­cu­ri­ty, health­care de­liv­ery, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and an eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan.