The po­lit­i­cal leader of Pro­gres­sive Par­ty Nikoli Ed­wards has ex­plained why he chose to con­test the seat of San Fer­nan­do West in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

The seat is cur­rent­ly held by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Speak­ing at the par­ty’s first gen­er­al meet­ing at NA­PA- South cam­pus Lit­tle The­atre on Sun­day, Ed­wards said it was the par­ty’s first pub­lic fo­rum since it launched in June ear­li­er this year.

Ad­dress­ing a small gath­er­ing of the par­ty al­so re­ferred to as The Pro­gres­sives, Ed­wards rat­i­fied the con­sti­tu­tion, held the in­stal­la­tion of ex­ec­u­tives and launched the 2020 elec­tion bid with the promise to have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive in all 42 con­stituen­cies.

He said af­ter care­ful de­lib­er­a­tion, San Fer­nan­do is the con­stituen­cy that helped groomed him in­to who he is to­day.

He said: “San Fer­nan­do is where my heart is and I feel as though our city is not prop­er­ly be­ing tak­en care of. When we look at the en­vi­ron­ment, this is not the San Fer­nan­do we know that has the po­ten­tial to great things. We have seen the gov­ern­ment come and go and speak about the de­vel­op­ment of the wa­ter­front, I have seen so many is­sues be­come po­lit­i­cal foot­balls, and we the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do must stand up and say enough is enough. San Fer­nan­do West wants some­one who un­der­stands the prob­lems, who comes from with­in. Some­one who knows how to progress.”

Ed­wards said many young per­sons joined a po­lit­i­cal par­ty think­ing they can make a dif­fer­ence on­ly get­ting in­volved and be­ing con­di­tioned to fol­low suit.

“What tends to hap­pen, we on­ly bring young peo­ple in­to pol­i­tics as a form of to­kenism. We saw in the elec­tions tak­ing place re­cent­ly and there were a num­ber of young peo­ple on plat­forms across the coun­ty rep­re­sent­ing these par­ties, but how many of them are in­volved on the ex­ec­u­tive of that po­lit­i­cal par­ty? How many of them ac­tu­al­ly have a say in that po­lit­i­cal par­ty? So it can’t be about youth to­kenism. We have to ac­tu­al­ly en­gage our young peo­ple so that they can get the train­ing nec­es­sary for them to be suc­cess­ful if they are to take up a po­si­tion as a min­is­ter or a mem­ber of par­lia­ment,” Ed­wards said.

He said over the next cou­ple of weeks the Pro­gres­sives will be to those who want to of­fer them­selves up to the par­ty.

The new­ly formed Pro­gres­sives ex­ec­u­tive con­sists of Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader Mor­gan Ramkallawan, Sec­re­tary, Kelsie Nan­coo, Chief Pol­i­cy and Strat­e­gy Of­fi­cer - Kier­an Khan, and An­tho­ny Bur­ne­ly – Chief Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Of­fi­cer.