The rul­ing PNM says ex-mem­ber Louis Lee Sing's plan to con­test the 12 seats in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion is no threat to its hold on those seats. How­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion UNC be­lieves Lee Sing can do some dam­age to PNM votes there.

Lee Sing's as yet unan­nounced po­lit­i­cal par­ty and its bid for the 12 seats in the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion, which he once head­ed, has been the sub­ject of dis­cus­sion in po­lit­i­cal cir­cles since he con­firmed his plans to Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day. The par­ty's can­di­dates will be pre­sent­ed in a few weeks.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings said yes­ter­day: "There' s no con­test. (Lee Sing's) par­ty pos­es no threat to PNM. We'll re­tain all Port-of-Spain seats. Whether he has for­mer PNM coun­cil­lors as can­di­dates or not, peo­ple will vote PNM.

"We're cam­paign­ing vig­or­ous­ly in all ar­eas and we plan to hold that Cor­po­ra­tion's seats. I can't say if he has a vendet­ta or not, all I know is there's no com­pe­ti­tion."

UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader David Lee, how­ev­er, said: "I wish Mr Lee Sing well in his en­deav­ours in the po­lit­i­cal are­na. I don't think UNC votes will be im­pact­ed, he might take PNM votes. As a past Port-of-Spain may­or, he can do dam­age to their votes."

Lee Sing said yes­ter­day: "In Port-of-Spain's his­to­ry on­ly one par­ty, the PNM, has been in charge and if it is that we're com­fort­able with what we have af­ter 60 years, that's fine. But if we feel we de­serve more and that an­oth­er group will look af­ter our in­ter­ests bet­ter, we need to elect an­oth­er."

Lee Sing, who had been a mem­ber of the PNM from age 14, served as may­or of Port-of-Spain from 2010-2013. He re­signed from the PNM in 2015 af­ter dif­fer­ences with the Row­ley lead­er­ship. He said then that there was "too much bit­ter­ness and ac­ri­mo­ny" in the par­ty and he wasn't about blind loy­al­ty.

The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in his new par­ty are from PNM.

Lee Sing has writ­ten to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) seek­ing a meet­ing to fi­nalise the new par­ty. He's seek­ing a sym­bol in­cor­po­rat­ing the sym­bol for POS in it, but many de­funct par­ties list­ed with EBC have the same sym­bol, he said.

"Peo­ple who are ex­cit­ed about an al­ter­na­tive have called me. Oth­ers have al­so ex­pressed con­cern for my well-be­ing, get­ting in­volved in this. Oth­ers want to know why we're lim­it­ing our­selves to Port-of-Spain, but it's not about vendet­ta. Vary­ing lev­els of im­prove­ments are re­quired in Port-of-Spain, even with the PNM in gov­ern­ment and we feel we can sup­ply im­prove­ments," Lee Sing said.

The group's fo­cus is Wood­brook and East Port-of-Spain and can­di­dates for those ar­eas in­clude for­mer PNM coun­cil­lors, he re­vealed.

"Our slo­gan in­volves leav­ing Port-of-Spain bet­ter than we're see­ing it now. It's in vary­ing stages of de­cay, hu­man filth on many street cor­ners, peo­ple beg­ging alms on oth­ers and some aren't home­less, they're sim­ply com­ing to Port-of-Spain to beg.

"We al­so want to com­plete a pro­gramme start­ed in my tenure—re­mov­ing and re­plac­ing the thou­sands of la­trine pits in East Port-of-Spain. You need prop­er bath­rooms in Man­dela Park, you can't have sports peo­ple uri­nat­ing on the trees and we'd want to com­plete the Des­per­lie Cres­cent com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. We need to cre­ate more jobs in Port-of-Spain and re­or­gan­ise traf­fic flow, so taxi stand lo­ca­tions and park­ing will be im­por­tant," he said.

Lee Sing said his par­ty al­so plans to speak with city busi­ness­men and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

"Port-of-Spain, which has 13 po­lice sta­tions, should be the safest. Why it isn't is some­thing we will work on. We know as we ad­vance there will be de­trac­tors and sup­port­ers, but we would like if sup­port­ers con­tribute to the work that's ahead," he said.