Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Jour­nal­ist

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

The Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) an­nounced yes­ter­day that it will be us­ing all of its re­sources to sup­port the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

At a press con­fer­ence fol­low­ing an emer­gency ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing, par­ty founder Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der said, “We’ve de­cid­ed for the up­com­ing elec­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due next year Sep­tem­ber, that the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty will be throw­ing its sup­port be­hind the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, and will be sup­port­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as leader and hope­ful prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, fol­low­ing the re­sults of that elec­tion.

“We be­lieve we have a strong voice and we be­lieve we will be able to bring a lot of sup­port.”

Alexan­der al­so re­vealed that dur­ing the emer­gency meet­ing, it was de­cid­ed that he would re­turn as the par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader. He said a sub­se­quent press con­fer­ence will be called to re­veal the mo­tives for his re­turn and his de­ci­sion to leave the post last No­vem­ber.

Af­ter re­sign­ing as par­ty leader, Alexan­der said law­suits against him by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Leader Mick­ela Pan­day caused him to quit pub­lic life and re­sign as PEP leader.

Last Oc­to­ber, the court or­dered Alexan­der to pay Im­bert $525,000 in dam­ages af­ter los­ing a defama­tion case con­cern­ing false al­le­ga­tions against Im­bert in 2020. In No­vem­ber, Alexan­der was or­dered by the court to pay $850,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to Pan­day.

In a state­ment, Alexan­der said, “Mem­bers of the pub­lic have been notic­ing these seem­ing­ly end­less law­suits and ac­com­pa­ny­ing awards and have been ask­ing me about them. Some have asked if this is in any way con­nect­ed to me step­ping out of pol­i­tics. The short an­swer is yes. I need­ed to in­su­late the par­ty we built while I at­tempt­ed to deal with all of it.”

Alexan­der pre­vi­ous­ly re­signed as PEP leader in Au­gust 2020 af­ter the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.