Kali­fa Clyne

Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas said yes­ter­day it was im­por­tant for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to un­der­stand the re­sults of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tion was an im­por­tant re­flec­tion of what the peo­ple were feel­ing.

"It is im­por­tant that we take heed of what is go­ing on and ad­just our pol­i­tics ac­cord­ing­ly. It is an im­por­tant re­flec­tion of what the peo­ple are feel­ing," Dou­glas told the me­dia af­ter dis­trib­ut­ing cheques to ca­lyp­so tents at Nicholas Tow­ers, Port-of-Spain. He con­grat­u­lat­ed the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the peo­ple of To­ba­go on the re­sults of Mon­day's elec­tion, in which the PNM swept all 12 seats.

"The peo­ple have spo­ken about what they want and that is all good in a democ­ra­cy. I am in sup­port of any Gov­ern­ment that works, re­la­tion­ships that work and pol­i­tics that work," Dou­glas said. He said To­ba­go had a fair and mean­ing­ful elec­tion process and he was in sup­port of that.

Asked whether he felt the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's de­feat in To­ba­go was an in­di­ca­tion of how peo­ple would vote for the next gen­er­al elec­tion, he said 2015 was far away. "A day is a long time in pol­i­tics. Any­thing can hap­pen," Dou­glas said. How­ev­er, he said he ex­pect­ed there would be changes with­in the Gov­ern­ment as the Part­ner­ship un­der­stood the re­sults were a rea­son­able state­ment.

He added: "It is im­por­tant for us to make the ad­just­ments and changes that can speak to the needs of the peo­ple." He dis­trib­uted $2.3 mil­lion to nine ca­lyp­so tents. "The tents had made re­quests and we gave them funds ac­cord­ing to those re­quests. They did not get all that they asked for but they got more than they would have got­ten be­fore," Dou­glas said.

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The tents which re­ceived fund­ing were the Na­tion­al Chut­ney Ca­lyp­so Tour­ing Tent of T&T, D En­ter­tain­er's Ca­lyp­so Tent, D'Mas­sive Go­sein Rov­ing Chut­ney Ca­lyp­so Tent, Yan­gatang, Ka­lyp­so Re­vue, Di­vas Ca­lyp­so Cabaret In­ter­na­tion­al, To­ba­go Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee and the Na­tion­al Ac­tion Cul­tur­al Com­mit­tee.