Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

A new­ly launched po­lit­i­cal par­ty wants to join the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in a coali­tion to con­test the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion in Au­gust.

The Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress (NDC) un­veiled its sym­bol - a bam­boo stalk and an im­age of peo­ple in na­tion­al colours - along with the par­ty colour, green, at a launch cer­e­mo­ny in Ari­ma yes­ter­day.

Chair­man David John said: “We have can­di­dates that are ready to run but we have writ­ten the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress for dis­cus­sion and un­til such time we will know def­i­nite­ly where we run­ning. So we are await­ing a re­sponse from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress which we ex­pect in a short time so that we can dis­cuss the ac­com­mo­da­tion so we will know def­i­nite­ly what seats we’ll run from what we wouldn’t run.”

The par­ty, which claims a mem­ber­ship of just over 350 and grow­ing, promis­es to de­liv­er a for­mu­la to get gov­er­nance right

John ad­mit­ted that it looked strange that the NDC was launched so close to the elec­tions.

“I will want to let you know that we have been hav­ing dis­cus­sions for some time now with oth­er in­di­vid­u­als, with oth­er groups and we de­cide that we will launch this week. It was in the plan­ning a while now, it’s not some­thing that just sprung up,” he said.

The par­ty’s in­ter­im po­lit­i­cal leader is Bono­fa­cio Vial­va and the sec­re­tary is Ani­ka John.

The NDC came out of the Grass­root Foun­da­tion which has been in ex­is­tence for more than 20 years.

Mem­bers of the ex­ec­u­tive said they want to bring par­ties with their var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal views to­geth­er, there will have to be a code of ethics so that every par­ty will be held to its tenets and stand uni­fied.

NDC of­fi­cials al­so want all par­ties to come to­geth­er to form the next gov­ern­ment with mu­tu­al re­spect, re­gard­less of the size of the mem­ber­ship.