Fos­ter Cum­mings came in for high praise from his Cab­i­net col­leagues last week, who de­scribed him as, "brave" and "re­lent­less," and "con­stant­ly push­ing" for more for his con­stituen­cy of La Hor­quet­ta Tal­paro. The praise led Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter and MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Symon De No­bri­ga to de­clare, " this con­stituen­cy will nev­er be con­sid­ered mar­gin­al again."

De No­bri­ga was speak­ing at the open­ing of the La Hor­quet­ta Pub­lic Li­brary in the heart of Cum­mings' con­stituen­cy. 

"I think [he is] con­stant­ly push­ing the en­ve­lope for the way that young peo­ple in this coun­try see them­selves and for his con­stituents of La Hor­quet­ta Tal­paro," De No­bri­ga said. 

When Cum­mings faces the  PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee to­day,  he does so un­op­posed, even as some oth­er PNM MPs in PNM safe seats are fac­ing chal­lenges. The La Hor­quet­ta Tal­paro seat was wrest­ed from the UNC's Jairam Seemu­n­gal in the 2015 elec­tion by Max­ie Cuffie who, stepped down at the end of the term due to health chal­lenges. Cum­mings won the seat in the 2020 elec­tion in a close race against the UNC's Jear­lean John, and has spent much of his tenure work­ing in the dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, PNM lean­ing, La Hor­quet­ta and Green­vale ar­eas. 

On No­vem­ber 18, Cum­mings turned the sod to mark the start of con­struc­tion of a new Youth De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre, at the cor­ner of Vic­tor Bruce Cir­cu­lar and Ahamad Charles Cres­cent in La Hor­quet­ta.

Out­side of La Hor­quet­ta though, sev­er­al ar­eas, in­clud­ing Mamoral, which tend to vote UNC, have crit­i­cised and ac­cused Cum­mings of ne­glect­ing them, as they of­ten com­plain of di­lap­i­dat­ed roads in the area, which they've held fiery protests for in the past. 

Al­so speak­ing at the event was Camille Robin­son Reg­is who was a for­mer MP for La Hor­quet­ta as well, who said Cum­mings did even more ad­vo­ca­cy than she did in the con­stituen­cy. 

"First of all, I did not say it on a pub­lic plat­form so that the prime min­is­ter at the time had to make sure he did this pub­lic li­brary, be­cause Fos­ter said it pub­licly. Sec­ond­ly, I did not, maybe every month­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing, bring up the li­brary. So Fos­ter fos­tered a de­sire, and here we are to­day," Robin­son Reg­is said.

When asked to com­ment on De­No­bri­ga's as­sess­ment of his po­lit­i­cal chances, Cum­mings said, "As far as you've asked in terms of the mar­gin­al­i­ty of this con­stituen­cy,  we have done the work.  And I have no doubt that La Hor­quet­ta/ Tal­paro will do the sen­si­ble thing  and re­tain the PNM as the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The praise comes at a time when Cum­mings isn't just fac­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion but even­tu­al­ly, an in­ter­nal PNM elec­tion as well, which could see him vy­ing for the post of po­lit­i­cal leader. But when faced with those ques­tions, Cum­mings wasn't as con­fi­dent or as­sertive.

"In­ter­nal elec­tions at the PNM are due in 2026," he replied with a ner­vous chuck­le. 

Cum­mings and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young are said to be the fron­trun­ners for lead­er­ship of the PNM. 

The UNC hasn't an­nounced a can­di­date yet for the seat for the gen­er­al elec­tion.