DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Fos­ter Cum­mings is ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) of en­gag­ing in vot­er sup­pres­sion tac­tics in the lead-up to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing at a meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy on Mon­day night, Cum­mings claimed the UNC has been pay­ing sub­stan­tial sums to so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers to dis­cour­age young peo­ple from vot­ing. He claimed in­flu­encers were be­ing paid as much as $10,000 per week in ex­change for post­ing an­ti-PNM con­tent.

Read­ing from a doc­u­ment, he said the con­tent is re­quired to in­clude the phrase “yel­low is the code” while crit­i­cis­ing the PNM and tar­get­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

So­cial me­dia videos crit­i­cis­ing the PNM have been cir­cu­lat­ing on­line amid the cam­paign, shared by Matara French, who has 109,000 fol­low­ers; Nigel C Wat­son, who has 50,000 fol­low­ers; and Kern Joseph, al­so known as Trinidad Kil­la, who boasts 144,000 fol­low­ers. Trinidad Kil­la al­so re­leased a song tar­get­ing the PNM, which he claimed was done vol­un­tar­i­ly and with­out pay­ment.

“That is what they have pre­sent­ed to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go in an ef­fort to sup­press the vote. Be­cause they feel if they sup­press the vote ... If they could fool you and en­cour­age you to stay home and talk ‘bout ‘I don’t vote and yel­low is the code’ et cetera, they can steal gov­ern­ment and get back in the Trea­sury and take your mon­ey and put it in their back bed­room that they have pre­pared for hun­dred-dol­lar bills,” Cum­mings al­leged.

He likened the al­leged strat­e­gy to the con­tro­ver­sial “Do So” cam­paign, which he said was linked to Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca dur­ing the 2010 Gen­er­al Elec­tion—de­scrib­ing it as “a bit suc­cess­ful.”

“In 2025, be­cause they feel we fool­ish, they ain’t come back with ‘Do So’, they come back with ‘yel­low is the code’. And they ex­pect that they can in­ject that in you to cause you young peo­ple not to come out of your house and vote. I say to you, do not al­low the UNC to fool you and ma­nip­u­late you. They are try­ing to get in­to your head. Re­ject the yel­low code, re­ject the yel­low code, red is the word, red is the word, red is the word, red is the word!”

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, UNC deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal dis­missed Cum­mings’ al­le­ga­tions as a “des­per­ate” at­tempt to de­flect at­ten­tion from the PNM’s chal­lenges, not­ing Cum­mings is feel­ing pres­sure from UNC can­di­date Phillip Watts.