Ch­agua­nas West MP Gan­ga Singh will move a mo­tion at the UNC's Na­tion­al As­sem­bly on Sun­day, call­ing on the po­lit­i­cal leader to en­gage with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and units, with an aim to­wards form­ing a coali­tion to con­test the 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion and the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Singh has sub­mit­ted the mo­tion called "Cre­at­ing a Uni­fied Po­lit­i­cal Plat­form" to the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive for de­bate.

It has been sec­ond­ed by San Juan/Barataria MP Dr Fuad Khan.

The mo­tion reads: "Be it re­solved that mem­bers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress at the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly on this day the 26th Jan­u­ary, 2019 at the Cou­va South Hall, re­quest the Po­lit­i­cal Leader to lead, un­der­take, ini­ti­ate and ex­plore con­struc­tive, co­op­er­a­tive dis­cus­sions with po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties, po­lit­i­cal par­ties, civic or­gan­i­sa­tions and pro­gres­sive in­di­vid­u­als, com­mit­ted to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, to cre­ate a strong and sus­tain­able po­lit­i­cal move­ment, to op­pose and de­feat the PNM in the com­ing Lo­cal and Gen­er­al Elec­tions, and to of­fer the coun­try the hope, the promise and the re­al­i­ty of good gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The mo­tion is be­ing raised on the sev­er­al bases, in­clud­ing that "our po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry has shown that a mean­ing­ful and ef­fec­tive po­lit­i­cal ve­hi­cle, uni­fy­ing those op­posed to the PNM, strength­ened and bound to­geth­er by a com­mon phi­los­o­phy and vi­sion, is the mech­a­nism for en­sur­ing vic­to­ry over the PNM".

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has won on­ly one of the sev­en gen­er­al elec­tions it com­pet­ed with­out an al­liance. That was in 2000, when the par­ty won the elec­tion by a mar­gin of 19- UNC, 16-PNM, 1 NAR.

Pri­or to that, the par­ty tied with the PNM in its first ever elec­tion in 1995, with a mar­gin of 17-17-2.

But af­ter win­ning in­de­pen­dent­ly in 2000, the coun­try was forced back to the polls in 2001 when the de­par­ture of Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, Ralph Maraj and Trevor Su­dama meant the UNC no longer had a ma­jor­i­ty in the House.

The UNC con­test­ed alone in 2001 elec­tion which re­sult­ed in an 18-18 tie, be­fore then-Pres­i­dent Arthur NR Robin­son ap­point­ed the PNM's Patrick Man­ning as prime min­is­ter.

With an­oth­er Par­lia­ment stale­mate, the coun­try went back to the polls in 2002 and the UNC lost 16-20 to the PNM.

The par­ty went back to an al­liance in 2007 but lost to the PNM while com­pet­ing as the UNC-A.

In 2010, the UNC was the ma­jor­i­ty par­ty in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) al­liance but it lost again in 2015, in a weak­ened PP coali­tion.