Gail Alexan­der

At least three par­ties—in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP)—may be fight­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment for its Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion in Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions ahead.

This was con­firmed last Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions are due with­in 90 days af­ter De­cem­ber 2.

Four months af­ter beat­ing the PNM in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions, the PDP opens its head­quar­ters in Barataria on Sun­day, prepar­ing to test its Trinidad stand­ing by con­test­ing PoS Cor­po­ra­tion seats.

The PDP head­quar­ters launch was an­nounced on PDP leader Wat­son Duke’s Face­book page. It showed Duke with in­sert­ed pic­tures of six very young peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races. To raise PDP’s pro­file for the of­fice open­ing, Duke walked through the San Juan Mar­ket last Sat­ur­day, of­fer­ing “free ad­ver­tise­ment” (sic) of ven­dors’ mer­chan­dise and he al­so held a walk­a­bout in Mal­ick the pre­vi­ous week­end.

Soon af­ter win­ning THA polls, Duke had said PDP would fight all elec­tions. Sub­se­quent­ly, he said the par­ty would open a PDP Trinidad branch.

At Sun­day’s of­fice open­ing, a date for PDP’s launch in Trinidad is ex­pect­ed.

The first pri­or­i­ty of PDP’s Trinidad branch will be to pre­pare a team to con­test seats in the PoS Cor­po­ra­tion in up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

The cur­rent 139 LG dis­tricts will be in­creased to 141 with the ad­di­tion of two more seats in the Cen­tral and Ma­yaro cor­po­ra­tions, fol­low­ing bound­ary change rec­om­men­da­tions in the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s draft re­port. This was laid in Par­lia­ment re­cent­ly.

The PoS Cor­po­ra­tion is re­gard­ed as a crown jew­el among the PNM’s cor­po­ra­tion hold­ings. PNM and UNC tied in the 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment poll but PNM lost ground in sev­er­al ar­eas.

Yes­ter­day, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings and PRO Lau­rel Leza­ma Lee Sing didn’t an­swer calls on the par­ty’s chal­lenge in PoS. Elec­tions of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram said he had “no com­ment.”

How­ev­er, UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo said yes­ter­day that the par­ty will mount chal­lenges in all Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment seats. UNC had con­test­ed the PoS cor­po­ra­tion in 2019 but lost.

For­mer PN­Mite Louis Lee Sing’s Port-of-Spain Peo­ple’s Move­ment (PPM) had con­test­ed all 12 seats in the PoS cor­po­ra­tion in 2019 – but six PPM can­di­dates lost their de­posits.

Lee Sing said last Sat­ur­day, “We came sec­ond to PNM in PoS cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas in the 2019 polls and beat the UNC. So we’re re­view­ing our op­tions for the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion and it isn’t lim­it­ed to any pos­si­bil­i­ty, since the PNM, which has been in ex­is­tence for 60 years, on­ly gar­nered 6,000 votes in the cap­i­tal that last elec­tion.”

He added, “We’ve been re­view­ing in the last year and con­tin­u­ing to en­gage the city in con­ver­sa­tions.”

Duke al­so pro­ject­ed that the PDP will con­test all 41 seats in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions. There’s been spec­u­la­tion on whether PDP will align with oth­er forces op­posed to PNM, in­clud­ing UNC.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised Duke’s PDP on its THA vic­to­ry. UNC rep­re­sent­ed PDP and oth­er To­ba­go op­po­si­tion groups’ con­cerns in 2021 Par­lia­ment de­bate on the To­ba­go in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment bill.

Duke and deputy Far­ley Au­gus­tine didn’t an­swer calls on the is­sue, or whether the PDP would work with oth­er par­ties op­posed to the PNM, in­clud­ing UNC, in fight­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

—Gail Alexan­der