Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der will take on Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West seat.

Alexan­der promised to give Young “a run for his mon­ey.”

He made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day at the launch of prospec­tive can­di­dates for the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion. He named three can­di­dates, him­self in­clud­ed.

Alexan­der said his par­ty’s agree­ment with the UNC was a strate­gic move to un­seat the PNM, en­sur­ing that no oth­er par­ty in the al­liance con­test­ed the seats his par­ty was tar­get­ing.

“We asked for a di­verse amount of seats. We asked for seats in La Brea, Point Fortin, D’Abadie/O’Meara (now Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca), the three Diego Mar­tin seats (Diego Mar­tin West, Cen­tral and North-East), Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, Port-of-Spain South,” Alexan­der said.

“But ul­ti­mate­ly, the coali­tion has a leader and a lead­er­ship team, and they would know where best to use which can­di­dates, be­cause all the can­di­dates have to be screened first by our par­ty, then by the en­tire coali­tion screen­ing com­mit­tee, to see that every­body, the right can­di­dates are put in the right seats, for the right bat­tle.”

Alexan­der, who con­test­ed the Diego Mar­tin West and Diego Mar­tin North-East seats in 2015 and 2020 as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date and as leader of the PEP re­spec­tive­ly, said he was the right can­di­date to chal­lenge Young.

He said the oth­er prospec­tive can­di­dates Jan­ice Lear­mond-Criqui and Bren­don Butts are per­fect to go against the PNM’s prospec­tive can­di­dates for Diego Mar­tin West and Diego Mar­tin North-East Hans des Vi­gnes and Colm Im­bert re­spec­tive­ly.

He said Lear­mond-Criqui was well-known in her con­stituen­cy, and based strict­ly on ed­u­ca­tion, life ex­pe­ri­ence, knowl­edge, abil­i­ty, and po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, “she is a far bet­ter can­di­date than des Vi­gnes.”

Butts, born and bred in Paramin, is a dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tor.

“So, you’re get­ting can­di­dates that are known on the ground, that un­der­stand, that bring more to the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion than just bac­cha­nal and noise.”

He said the UNC and PEP agreed not to com­pete against each oth­er, fo­cus­ing in­stead on chal­leng­ing the PNM.

Alexan­der stat­ed that a third of vot­ers in those ar­eas were un­will­ing to sup­port the PNM. He hopes to in­spire them to vote and choose his par­ty in­stead.

Alexan­der said he hoped to get more than ten seats but is will­ing to “be a team play­er and what we get, we take.”

COP to name seats be­ing con­test­ed this week

Al­so part of the ac­com­mo­da­tion is the Con­gress of the Peo­ple led by Prakash Ra­mad­har. When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ra­mad­har said he would an­nounce the al­lot­ted seats to the pub­lic lat­er this week.

Mean­while, the UNC will an­nounce its prospec­tive can­di­dates to­mor­row. The UNC has his­tor­i­cal­ly con­test­ed on­ly 39 seats in Trinidad, leav­ing the two To­ba­go seats un­con­test­ed.

An­a­lyst pre­dicts ‘clash of the gi­ants’

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad said the seats Alexan­der an­nounced will be “a clash of the gi­ants,” with his mem­bers go­ing up against des Vi­gnes, Im­bert, and Young.

“It would be in­ter­est­ing to see if Phillip can bring out those vot­ers who have been very dis­en­chant­ed with the for­mer prime min­is­ter, who are not pleased with the ap­point­ment and the whole pro­ce­dures for the ap­point­ment of the new prime min­is­ter, who are not pleased with his stig­ma or his sem­blance of be­ing elit­ist, part of the one per cent, and him not be­ing elect­ed by the peo­ple, by the PNM mass­es, and who are not pleased and were not pleased with the for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert.”