Chester Sam­bra­no

The elec­tion was called at a time when the econ­o­my is strug­gling, and back­pay is­sues re­main un­re­solved, ac­cord­ing to Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus, po­lit­i­cal leader of the In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA).

Fol­low­ing the elec­tion date an­nounce­ment, Tsoiafatt-An­gus told Guardian Me­dia that vot­ers will head to the polls dis­tract­ed from the gov­ern­ment’s poor per­for­mance.

She point­ed to the re­cent bil­lion-dol­lar com­mis­sion­ing of a hos­pi­tal block two weeks ago, fol­lowed by the par­tial com­mis­sion­ing of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal, call­ing it a strat­e­gy to mis­lead the pub­lic.

“At a time when the econ­o­my is at its low­est and back pay is­sues have yet to be set­tled, will the peo­ple re­ward the PNM for its ob­vi­ous abuse of pub­lic funds over the last week for their own po­lit­i­cal mileage? That ques­tion will soon be an­swered. Nev­er­the­less, the IDA is ready for the elec­tions.”

The IDA claims these ac­tions demon­strate that the rul­ing par­ty has mis­used pub­lic funds for po­lit­i­cal gain. Mean­while, Tsoiafatt-An­gus said her par­ty is set to in­tro­duce its can­di­dates at a me­dia con­fer­ence on March 25.