Gail Alexan­der

There was a close end to the race last night when the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's Ter­rence Deyals­ingh cap­tured the St Joseph seat, forg­ing ahead of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress's Ian Al­leyne by a nar­row mar­gin of 779 votes.Deyals­ingh's vic­to­ry has in­creased the PNM's seats in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 12–won in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion– to 13, re­duc­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion's seats from 29 to 28.PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley crowed around 9.45 pm, "The PP Gov­ern­ment has lost its man­date to op­er­ate. This has got to be a Guin­ness Book of Records (en­try)–los­ing four elec­tions in one year. Call the gen­er­al elec­tion as soon as pos­si­ble, soon­er the bet­ter!"Deyals­ingh was hailed as win­ner by wild­ly cel­e­brat­ing PN­Mites at the PNM's St Joseph of­fice, where they chor­tled and boast­ed that Deyals­ingh had giv­en Al­leyne a "wet­ting"–a term Al­leyne had made pop­u­lar on his Crime Watch pro­gramme.Deyals­ingh said his vic­to­ry showed the PNM, with a good can­di­date, could beat back Gov­ern­ment "in­duce­ments."

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whose ad­min­is­tra­tion suf­fered its fourth elec­toral de­feat in 11 months, spoke al­most an hour af­ter the PNM's vic­to­ry was an­nounced.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, con­grat­u­lat­ing all can­di­dates, said, "While the re­sults may have been very close, we must ac­cept the voice of the peo­ple and we ac­cept it and con­grat­u­late Mr Deyals­ingh–but my MPs have served no­tice, you're just there un­til the next elec­tion."The UNC's Al­leyne said he was not a "los­er," since he had ac­com­plished a lot in ten days and lost on­ly by sev­er­al hun­dred votes."It ent over yet, I'm com­ing back again and I'm not leav­ing the UNC," Al­leyne added last night, blam­ing the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) and his for­mer friend Om Lal­la for "split votes."The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion is­sued a state­ment just af­ter 9.30 pm say­ing pre­lim­i­nary re­sults of the by-elec­tion showed Deyals­ingh with 6,356 votes and Al­leyne with 5,577 votes. The ILP's Om Lal­la ob­tained 1,976 votes, los­ing his de­posit, in­de­pen­dent can­di­date Er­rol Fa­bi­en won 300 votes and the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al As­sem­bly's Michael Lopez, five.

The EBC es­ti­mat­ed the per­cent­age of the elec­torate which vot­ed was 53 per cent. Of the to­tal elec­torate of 26,891, some 121 were spe­cial vot­ers who had vot­ed al­ready, en­ti­tling 26,770 to vote yes­ter­day.ILP leader Jack Warn­er last night said yes­ter­day's de­feat was more of a "grow­ing pain." He turned the fo­cus to the PP, say­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion had lost four elec­tions in one year and oth­ers had more rea­son to wor­ry than the ILP."St Joseph hasn't heard the last of Om Lal­la," Warn­er al­so said, con­grat­u­lat­ing Deyals­ingh.Deyals­ingh and Al­leyne es­tab­lished ear­ly leads from 8 am, run­ning al­most neck and neck at one point, un­til 9 pm, when the gap widened.PN­Mites at the par­ty's St Joseph of­fice start­ed cel­e­brat­ing from 9.15 pm, just be­fore the fi­nal re­sults were ob­tained.Deyals­ingh re­places for­mer MP Her­bert Vol­ney, who re­signed from the UNC in Sep­tem­ber when the seat was de­clared va­cant.Vol­ney had won the seat from the PNM's Kennedy Swarats­ingh in the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion with over 10,000 votes, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 3,000 more votes than Swarats­ingh.

Deyals­ingh, who was ap­point­ed a PNM sen­a­tor in 2010, will be­come the ninth PNM MP to hold the St Joseph seat since 1956. The NAR and UNC had held the seat six times since then al­so.

PNM of­fi­cials said last night Deyals­ingh's seat in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is ex­pect­ed be in "close prox­im­i­ty" to the par­ty leader's, prob­a­bly mid­way along the row.The vic­to­ry is yet an­oth­er elec­toral ad­vance for the Op­po­si­tion.This fol­lows Jan­u­ary's To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly "white­wash," Ju­ly's de­feat of the UNC/PP in its heart­land Ch­agua­nas West and al­so in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment polls of two weeks ago, in which the UNC took five cor­po­ra­tions to the PNM's eight.The UNC's fourth elec­toral loss last night prompt­ed its coali­tion part­ner, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), to warn that the de­feat was a mes­sage to the Gov­ern­ment.How­ev­er, the UNC's St Joseph co-or­di­na­tor, Gan­ga Singh, last night said the nar­row mar­gin by which Al­leyne lost showed the UNC had held strong and seen a "resur­gence" af­ter its lo­cal gov­ern­ment per­for­mance.Al­leyne had said dur­ing the cam­paign that he was on va­ca­tion from his Crime Watch pro­gramme. It could not be as­cer­tained last night if or when he would re­turn to host­ing the show.