Derek Achong

Two can­di­dates for the San Juan/Barataria con­stituen­cy have ex­pressed hope in their chances of se­cur­ing the seat for their re­spec­tive po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

In a brief in­ter­view af­ter he cast his bal­lot near his home at the San Juan SDA Pri­ma­ry School in San Juan, ear­li­er this morn­ing, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Ja­son Williams said he was con­fi­dent in his chances but would be sat­is­fied what­ev­er the even­tu­al out­come is.

"I walked up hills and went down steps. I went through hills, and val­leys and I feel that we would have done our best and the re­sults tonight will re­flect the ef­fort," he said.

The first time can­di­date said he took longer than ex­pect­ed to cast his bal­lot as he savoured the mo­ment of be­ing able to vote for him­self in elec­tion in his home com­mu­ni­ty of San Juan.

"At the end of the day not every can­di­date would be from the area they are rep­re­sent­ing, I un­der­stand that, but I think it is some­thing spe­cial when you live in the area you want to rep­re­sent. It is a per­fect syn­er­gy," the vet­er­an me­dia per­son­al­i­ty said.

Williams said he did not ex­pe­ri­ence any is­sues with the COVID-19 pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures used by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) as its staff at the polling sta­tion were very pro­fes­sion­al.

In an in­ter­view at her of­fice at Tenth Av­enue, Barataria, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) can­di­date Al­bertha Pur­deen al­so ex­pressed con­fi­dence in her and her par­ty's chances in the elec­tion.

"It was a won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence and I would not change it for any­thing. We have been on the ground for sev­er­al years ed­u­cat­ing and em­pow­er­ing peo­ple and the feed­back has been very good for the PEP," Pur­deen said.

Like Pur­deen, who vot­ed in El Do­ra­do, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Sad­dam Ho­sein, who lives in cen­tral Trinidad, vot­ed at the War­renville Pres­by­ter­ian School.

When a news team vis­it­ed Ho­sein's cam­paign of­fice at El So­cor­ro Road around mid­day he was not present but a large con­tin­gent of his sup­port staff and sup­port­ers were on hand per­form­ing their du­ties.

Like most con­stituen­cies across T&T, there were large amounts of vot­ers turn­ing out for the morn­ing pe­ri­od with num­bers lev­el­ing off around mid­day.