Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, the Op­po­si­tion UNC will now have an al­der­man in the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for the first time since 2010, but the UNC is blank­ing to­day’s swear­ing-in of coun­cil­lors in sev­er­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Both sets of de­vel­op­ments were con­firmed yes­ter­day.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) yes­ter­day fi­nalised al­lo­ca­tion of al­der­men and wrote the PNM and UNC par­ties no­ti­fy­ing them of how many al­der­men each was as­signed.

Al­so, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein said coun­cil­lor-des­ig­nates from large­ly PNM-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions will be sworn in to­day in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin, San Juan/Laven­tille and Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co.

He said swear­ings-in would be done for who was avail­able. He said he’d learned the UNC wouldn’t be swear­ing in its coun­cil­lors to­day. The UNC con­firmed yes­ter­day that its can­di­dates won’t be sworn in un­til next week when may­ors would al­so be sworn in. The UNC no­ti­fied the Min­istry of the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day.

As a re­sult, a sched­uled swear­ing-in at the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro cor­po­ra­tion to­day may on­ly be at­tend­ed by lone PNM coun­cil­lor-des­ig­nate, Wen­dell Perez.

Both the UNC and PNM tied in Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion re­sults, each win­ning sev­en of the 14 cor­po­ra­tions. The PNM won 74 of the 139 cor­po­ra­tion seats and UNC, 65. The UNC won the pop­u­lar vote with 202,584 votes and the PNM got 161,962.

The EBC has to an­nounce al­der­men up to four days af­ter a poll. Par­ties have un­til De­cem­ber 11 to in­form the EBC of the names of their al­der­men.

EBC of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day the num­ber of al­der­men is based on a for­mu­la in the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act (Sec­tion 13). The pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion for­mu­la in­volves the to­tal num­ber of votes a par­ty ob­tains in an en­tire cor­po­ra­tion re­gion- and not the num­ber of seats it wins. To ob­tain an al­der­man, a par­ty has to win at least a quar­ter of the votes cast in a re­gion.

UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dave Tan­coo yes­ter­day con­firmed that the EBC no­ti­fied the UNC of the num­ber of al­der­men as­signed.

Checks by Guardian Me­dia con­firmed the UNC was as­signed a to­tal of 27 al­der­men spread over 12 of the 14 cor­po­ra­tions. This in­cludes one al­der­man in Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion for the first time since 2010 when the UNC/PP had such par­tic­i­pa­tion in that cor­po­ra­tion. It was con­trolled by PNM in the re­cent term and will be again in the new term.

Al­so, the Op­po­si­tion now has more al­der­men in San Fer­nan­do cor­po­ra­tion, won by PNM. The UNC had one be­fore and now has two. The UNC al­so has two al­der­men in San­gre Grande and Siparia cor­po­ra­tions.

It was as­signed three each in Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va, Ma­yaro and Princes Town cor­po­ra­tions. The UNC will con­tin­ue to have one al­der­man each in Ari­ma and San Juan-Laven­tille.

Its high­est num­ber of al­der­men is in Pe­nal/Debe. The par­ty has none in PoS and Point Fortin.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings said the par­ty was in­formed by the EBC of how many al­der­men it was as­signed. He pro­ject­ed the PNM would have ma­jor­i­ty al­der­men in cor­po­ra­tions the par­ty won strong­ly. Cum­mings said may­ors will be cho­sen next week.

Guardian Me­dia’s checks con­firmed the PNM re­ceived from a max­i­mum of four al­der­men (in Point Fortin and PoS), two in some places in­clud­ing San Fer­nan­do, to a min­i­mum of one (Cen­tral).

Mean­while yes­ter­day Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was at St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre from 8.15 am, ac­com­pa­ny­ing her hus­band Dr Gre­go­ry Bisses­sar who was ward­ed for chest pains. He was re­port­ed by yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to be rest­ing com­fort­ably. Dr Bisses­sar had been at his wife’s side through­out re­cent Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign­ing.