Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

De­spite a Guardian Me­dia poll which sug­gests the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' "Coali­tion of In­ter­ests" was lead­ing in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is not con­vinced me­dia polls can ac­cu­rate­ly con­vey the out­come of the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing dur­ing a meet­ing at Las Lo­mas #2 Recre­ation Grounds on Sat­ur­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar was crit­i­cal of pre­vi­ous polls pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia, de­scrib­ing them as "sup­pres­sion polls" in­tend­ed to dis­suade her par­ty's sup­port­ers and "keep them at home" for the elec­tion.

"The PNM boss­es ma­nip­u­late these polls," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, sug­gest­ing Guardian Me­dia was be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly in­flu­enced.

"We have been do­ing our own polling; me­dia hous­es charge the PNM less than the UNC for ad­ver­tis­ing and in some cas­es, they are not charg­ing them at all. The state in­sti­tu­tions are be­ing forced to car­ry PNM pro­pa­gan­da."

She added, "We have been con­duct­ing our own in­de­pen­dent polling week­ly since last year and that polling has been on­go­ing and up­dat­ing."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's claims were, how­ev­er, made hours be­fore the Guardian Me­dia 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion poll was pub­lished hours lat­er yes­ter­day morn­ing. The poll, con­duct­ed by Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany, es­ti­mat­ed that the UNC was in the lead in Trinidad by 45% while the PNM was trail­ing be­hind at 30%.

De­spite her at­tack on Guardian Me­dia, Per­sad-Bisses­sar soft­ened her stance as she shift­ed fo­cus to re­porters and pho­tog­ra­phers in the field, whom she said were not a part of the al­leged con­spir­a­cy.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts and aca­d­e­mics were al­so not spared, as Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused them of "eat­ing a food."