by Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Voters in Trinidad and Tobago ignored calls for “new politics” and re-elected the People’s National Movement (PNM) for a new five-year term in office, while in the process decimating the newly formed Congress of the People (COP) party on Monday.

 

In preliminary results released here by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) the PNM won 26 out of the 41 seats that were being contested in a general election for the first time in the history of the oil-rich twin island republic.

 

The main opposition United National Congress (UNC) that formed an alliance with some minor opposition groups under the banner United National Congress Alliance (UNCA) won the remaining 15 seats.

 

Prime Minister and PNM leader Patrick Manning told thousands of supporters who had descended on the party’s headquarters during the early hours of Tuesday that he was satisfied with the results.

 

“The people have spoken….I had said before we are prepared to work with whatever majority the people gave us,” he said describing the 11 seat difference as “a comfortable majority”.

 

Manning said that the party “owed a debt of gratitude to the young people” whom he said had voted in “with a vengeance” in support of the 51-year old political group that has been in office here for all but 11 years of its existence.

 

“Never before have the youth of Trinidad and Tobago voted the way they did,” he said describing the four week campaign as a “hard fought battle” but also “ a most enjoyable campaign”.

 

The Prime Minister, who told the supporters that he had already held talks with President George Maxwell Richards regarding the oath of office for the head of the new government, said that he would be sworn into office at a public ceremony to be held at Woodford Square in the heart of the capital on Wednesday afternoon.

 

He said the ceremony would be in recognition of the party’s gratitude.

 

 “In the same way you supported us, I invite each and every one of you to the ceremony,” Manning said reiterating his early position that there should be no animosity among the population.

 

He said while he understood that during the campaign that persons would have shown support for other political parties, the time had now come for the nation to “come back as one”.

 

The campaign had been marred by the murder of Sean Douglas, a political activist with the UNCA and the severe beating given to COP candidate David St. Clair but the police in a statement said that the 12-hour voting period had been incident free.

 

Manning promised that the “next five years will be better than the last five years” and that the population would see a degree of progress “faster than the last”.

 

The results of the polls were devastating for the COP, a breakaway faction of the UNC that had campaigned for a new brand of politics in the country.

 

Opinion polls had predicted that the party, led by former Central Bank governor Winston Dookeran would not have won any seats and the results meant that a number of former legislators including Dookeran and prominent attorney Gillian Lucky have been booted out.

 

Dookeran in conceding defeat vowed that his new political grouping “is here to stay” and that he would continue to build it on the principles on which it was founded.

 

“While the battle has been lost the party will continue to fight,” he said adding that he was also confident that the PNM and the UNC “would come around to the new politics his party has been talking about”.

 

Among the victors in the election were Jack Warner, the Vice-President of the International Football Federation (FIFA), who was one of the two co-leaders of the UNCA and Mekela Panday, the daughter of the former prime minister Basdeo Panday, who was also re-elected to serve the constituency of Couva North.

 

In the last parliament, Panday was evicted from the seat after he had been found guilty of failing to declare to the Integrity Commission, a bank account he and his wife, Oma, held with a London bank.

 

The jail term imposed on him by Chief Magistrate Sherman Mc Nicolls was overturned by the Court of Appeal that also ordered a new trial, but the same court later ruled against him returning to Parliament.

 

The EBC said that nearly one million voters were eligible to cast ballots in Monday’s general election. There were 130 candidates including 33 women and five independents.

 

CMC