GAIL ALEXAN­DER

The rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) yes­ter­day lost sig­nif­i­cant ground in To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) polls and al­so lost one seat in Trinidad by-elec­tions.

The PNM lost a hand­ful of seats to the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and tied with the Wat­son Duke led par­ty for con­trol of the THA. And the PNM al­so lost the Ari­ma Cen­tral dis­trict to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in yes­ter­day’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment by-elec­tions

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley, who was in To­ba­go last night, didn’t ad­dress sup­port­ers or the me­dia. In­stead, To­ba­go PNM Coun­cil leader Tracey David­son-Ce­les­tine, speak­ing at 10.10 pm, an­nounced the out­come of yes­ter­day’s elec­tions.

“The PNM has re­tained six seats and we con­grat­u­late all can­di­dates. The out­come is not one we’re quite sat­is­fied with but at this point, we’re still thank­ful,” she said.

David­son-Ce­les­tine said the elec­tion had not yet been de­clared but the re­sults were trend­ing in the 6/6 di­rec­tion.

“We have to wait to see what di­rec­tion this 6/6 will take us,” she said.

Dur­ing the cam­paign, the PNM had asked To­bag­o­ni­ans to give the par­ty a “birth­day gift” by vot­ing for them yes­ter­day, one day af­ter the par­ty cel­e­brat­ed its 65th an­niver­sary on Sun­day.

An ec­sta­t­ic PDP leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine, who was in a Rox­bor­ough mo­tor­cade cel­e­brat­ing at 10.15 pm, said: “We’re elat­ed! We have tied. We knew that NAC­TA poll (which claimed PNM would have won) was bo­gus all the time. This is a new day!”

Au­gus­tine said the law is silent on how con­trol of the THA would be worked out if there was a tied re­sult.

“We don’t know at this point what may take place,” he added.

The law in­di­cates that As­sem­bly­men have to get to­geth­er to choose a Chief Sec­re­tary.

Yes­ter­day’s 11th THA elec­tion to fill 12 seats was a tight, hard race be­tween the PNM and the PDP.

The PDP had an arrange­ment with the To­ba­go For­wards and sev­er­al of the new seats the par­ty took from PNM were in ar­eas which tra­di­tion­al­ly were an­ti-PNM.

In the last term, the PNM held 10 of the 12 THA seats, while the PDP held two seats in To­ba­go East dis­tricts. Last night the PDP took four more seats which PNM had held, end­ing up with six seats.

PDP won Prov­i­dence/Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah, Bethel/Mt Irv­ing, Good­wood/Belle Gar­den and Ply­mouth/Gold­en Lane.

Ques­tions about Chief Sec­re­tary

Au­gus­tine re­tained the Par­latu­vi­er/L’Anse/ Four­mi/Spey­side and Duke re­tained his Rox­bor­ough/De­laford seat.

By 9.35 pm, PNM To­ba­go chair­man Stan­ford Cal­len­dar said the PNM had won six seats: Caanan /Bon Ac­cord, Buc­coo /Mt Pleas­ant, Ba­co­let/Mt St George, Scar­bor­ough /Calder Hall, Black Rock/Whim/Spring Gar­den and Lam­beau/Sig­nal Hill.

David­son-Ce­les­tine won Lam­beau-Sig­nal Hill but the fact that the PNM slipped so much, has raised ques­tions about her lead­er­ship and her bid to be­come the THA’s first fe­male Chief Sec­re­tary.

Cal­len­dar said the par­ty would like­ly seek a re­count in the Bethel/Mt Irvine seat which PNM ap­peared to have lost to PDP by a dozen-odd votes.

If the sit­u­a­tion re­mains at a 6/6 tie, Cal­len­dar couldn’t say what would be used to de­ter­mine who would con­trol the THA. He said the Con­sti­tu­tion is silent on that.

For­mer PNM mem­ber Denise Tsoiafatt-An­gus who left the par­ty and con­test­ed in­de­pen­dent­ly in Scar­bor­ough/Calder Hall didn’t win. The PNM re­tained that seat.

UNC grabs Ari­ma Cen­tral

The UNC was ju­bi­lant last night af­ter tak­ing Ari­ma Cen­tral from the PNM.

Yes­ter­day’s five by-elec­tions were held to fill va­can­cies cre­at­ed af­ter three PNM and two UNC coun­cil­lors be­come Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment fol­low­ing the Au­gust 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion but the UNC end­ed up with three of the seats.

By 8.52 pm a ju­bi­lant UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared vic­to­ry in Cunu­pia and Hin­dus­tan/St Mary’s, which the par­ty re­tained, and an­nounced that they had wrest­ed Ari­ma Cen­tral from the PNM.

“God is great, thank you to the vot­ers. We go for­ward for­ti­fied and strength­ened to the Par­lia­ment with our no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the in­com­pe­tent Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young,” she de­clared.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC had won with more votes in the seats than it did be­fore.

Hinds: We win some, we lose some

The PNM re­tained the two of the seats it pre­vi­ous­ly held, with Jinelle Schulere-Smart in Morne Co­co/Alyce Glen) and Leslie Chang Fong, Hol­ly­wood.

Deputy leader Fitzger­ald Hinds ad­mit­ted at 9.30 pm that the par­ty had ex­pect­ed to hold three seats, in­clud­ing Ari­ma Cen­tral. He said some­thing might have mit­i­gat­ed against the tar­get.

“But we win some we lose some, we’ve been there be­fore. What we do af­ter is a post-mortem to see our strengths and soft spots and use our ex­pe­ri­ence to ex­am­ine things whether it means re­ar­rang­ing peo­ple or pol­i­cy,” he said.