An­na-Lisa Paul

Min­utes af­ter de­clar­ing that St Au­gus­tine had been won by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) last evening, Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader Khadi­jah Ameen warned her burgess­es that while the first leg of the bat­tle had been won, the hard work was now about to be­gin.

Ar­riv­ing at the head of­fice at Free­man Road, St Au­gus­tine, around 9 pm, Ameen was met by a large crowd of sup­port­ers who lined the road and warm­ly em­braced her as the sound of tas­sa punc­tu­at­ed the qui­et night.

Even though the fi­nal num­ber of votes had not yet been re­ceived up to 10 pm, ini­tial fig­ures in­di­cat­ed that by 10.10 pm, Ameen had se­cured 9,582 votes as op­posed to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) can­di­date Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal who had net­ted 3,124 votes at the time.

A check at that time re­vealed the po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan had se­cured 140 votes; the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty’s (PEP) Mau­rice Downes had gar­nered 191 votes; and the Trinidad Hu­man­i­ty Cam­paign’s (THC) Mar­cus Ramkissoon had net­ted 25 votes.

Greet­ing every­one as she en­tered the com­pound, Ameen took time to speak with each per­son who had turned out to cel­e­brate her vic­to­ry.

Proud of her team for fight­ing a clean cam­paign, Ameen said, “We fought an elec­tion based on what we planned to do for St Au­gus­tine and what we plan to do for T&T.”

Ameen said they had not en­gaged in at­tack­ing any op­po­nents be­cause she had been con­fi­dent of win­ning and knew that they would have to work with all the res­i­dents of the con­stituen­cy there­after.

Vow­ing to serve the peo­ple of St Au­gus­tine, Ameen said, “We have a lot of work to do. If you think the cam­paign was bad, wait for the next five years.”

She called on the res­i­dents to join hands with her to de­vel­op and im­prove the area go­ing for­ward.