Jesse Ramdeo

Can­di­dates who bat­tled in mar­gin­al seats were among those to face the most pres­sure on Mon­day’s polling night, but for the big names who failed to hit the mark, what’s go­ing to be their next move? Some say while they may be step­ping back, they will not be step­ping out of the po­lit­i­cal are­na en­tire­ly.

David Nakhid has played at are­nas around the world, but the po­lit­i­cal are­na proved to be a chal­lenge for the for­mer na­tion­al foot­baller. Cho­sen by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to un­seat the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in Tu­na­puna, Nakhid has now called foul fol­low­ing the re­sults.

At a press con­fer­ence on Wednes­day at the El Do­ra­do com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, he said while the re­count was on­go­ing, he re­mained fo­cused on vic­to­ry. “Im not look­ing that far ahead, why we look­ing that far ahead we are in­volved in a process that is a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process and we will see it through and mi­cro­man­age this with my cam­paign man­ag­er who has nev­er left my side.”

It al­so wasn’t the smooth sail­ing Win­ston Gyp­sy Pe­ters was hop­ing for on elec­tion night. From very ear­ly, it was clear that his ship had hit rough wa­ters in what many pre­dict­ed would be the most fierce­ly con­test­ed mar­gin­al seat. With the lyrics to his pop­u­lar ca­lyp­so, “sink­ing ship” res­onat­ing, has the time now come for the ex­tem­po king to aban­don ship? “I will keep on do­ing ex­act­ly what I was do­ing all the time, sing my songs, write my songs and con­tin­ue to trav­el the world and sing.”

Pe­ters, who said he re­mained a life mem­ber of the PNM added he was sat­is­fied with Mon­day’s re­sults and even as a re­count is on­go­ing in the mar­gin­al seat of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, the UNC’s can­di­date Jear­lean John has not tak­en her sights off serv­ing res­i­dents.

“At this point right af­ter a very tough cam­paign you take a lit­tle time to re­flect but it doesn’t mean I will with­draw from this coun­try that I love so much a coun­try which has been so much and I am not go­ing to with­draw.”

Mean­while, Ja­son Williams, who lost the race for Barataria/San Juan to the UNC’s Sad­dam Ho­sein kept his cards close to his chest on Mon­day when asked about his fu­ture.

“I re­al­ly need to un­wind, watch the sun­set and then I’d take it from there so I don’t re­al­ly want to give a par­tic­u­lar procla­ma­tion just yet.”