Even in the de­spair of de­feat, the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) found joy in the down­fall of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), with its Po­lit­i­cal Leader Mick­ela Pan­day—daugh­ter of late for­mer prime min­is­ter and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress founder Bas­deo Pan­day—ea­ger to see how the in­com­ing UNC coali­tion gov­ern­ment will de­liv­er on its promis­es.

Min­utes af­ter Pan­day con­ced­ed de­feat in her par­ty’s maid­en elec­toral bid, dozens of sup­port­ers at the par­ty’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice erupt­ed in cheers as they watched PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­cede the elec­tion.

Some shout­ed, “It good for yuh!” and “PNM gone!”

Even be­fore Row­ley’s con­ces­sion, Pan­day de­clared, “The coun­try was ready to get rid of the PNM and couldn’t risk five more years. That is how it looks to me.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Pan­day con­grat­u­lat­ed the UNC and ex­pressed hope that it would con­duct it­self dif­fer­ent­ly from its 2010 to 2015 tenure.

“This rounds, what I would like is more trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty. All the promis­es, I’m quite ex­cit­ed to see how they are go­ing to ful­fil them. Things are very dif­fi­cult in Trinidad and To­ba­go to­day, peo­ple do not have food to eat. There­fore, I look for­ward to them do­ing well,” Pan­day said.

As for the PNM’s fu­ture in op­po­si­tion, she ad­vised them not to op­pose for op­pos­ing sake.

“If you can do some­thing to work to­geth­er, I want to see con­ti­nu­ity, and if you can work to­geth­er and build this coun­try and lift it out of the abyss that it’s in, I can on­ly sup­port that, and the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front will be do­ing that.”

Pan­day ad­mit­ted that the PF had not se­cured any seats but said the over­all re­sults marked “a turn­ing of the tide” in T&T’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape.

She said the par­ties that won formed a coali­tion, while her team con­test­ed on their own. She not­ed that no one en­ters an elec­tion to lose, but the dis­ap­point­ment does not out­weigh the pride.

“There is no oth­er word be­sides, I’m re­al­ly, re­al­ly proud, and I know my fa­ther would have been proud. I stood up brave­ly, all 36 of us when oth­ers cow­ered and crawled back in­to lit­tle holes wher­ev­er they were go­ing to,” she said as she thanked sup­port­ers.

Pan­day said her par­ty made his­to­ry, man­ag­ing 37 can­di­dates in a short cam­paign.

“We did it with class and grace and dig­ni­ty. We nev­er badtalk no­body. Our can­di­dates, what­ev­er the out­come, can walk the streets to­mor­row. I don’t know many of them who won their seat can do that with­out cussing them.”

As for the com­men­ta­tors who may judge their fledg­ling par­ty, she said they had no big truck, ar­ti­cle, float, or moko jumbie, but were on the ground work­ing with pure kind­ness and love for peo­ple.

As for the PF’s fu­ture, Pan­day said it will con­test the next Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.