Gail Alexan­der

Bound­ary changes are ahead for next year's gen­er­al elec­tion.Con­fir­ma­tion comes with to­day's mark­ing of the fourth year since the cur­rent Tenth Par­lia­ment be­gan on June 18, 2010, for­mal­is­ing the ap­proach of the end of the five-year term and start of the gen­er­al elec­tion stretch.Af­ter to­day, no more by-elec­tions can be held even if a seat be­comes va­cant.The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion last Sat­ur­day said the Con­sti­tu­tion's Sec­tion 69 (3) pre­cludes by-elec­tions af­ter the fourth year of a term.

Yes­ter­day the T&T Guardian con­firmed from oth­er sources that con­stituen­cy bound­ary changes would be made in a hand­ful of seats all over Trinidad, ow­ing to in­creas­ing pop­u­la­tions in some ar­eas.Reg­u­la­tions state that To­ba­go must have two seats and to get Trinidad's dis­trict al­lo­ca­tion, Trinidad's elec­torate is di­vid­ed by 39. Ac­cord­ing to the re­sult­ing fig­ure, each con­stituen­cy must then house no more than ten per cent above or ten per cent be­low that fig­ure.

A re­port is ex­pect­ed to pub­li­cise bound­ary changes soon as well as an­oth­er on lo­cal gov­ern­ment bound­aries af­ter that.House Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said last Sun­day, he ex­pect­ed T&T would con­tin­ue to have 41 seats and could not say any­thing about changes.Ac­knowl­edg­ing in­ter­nal changes around the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) and In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP), he added:

"The UNC is very con­fi­dent that in gen­er­al elec­tion we will re­tain seats we cur­rent­ly hold and we are work­ing with part­ners to en­sure we deep­en our po­ten­tial work. We are al­so deep­en­ing the strength of our per­for­mance and de­liv­ery of key goods."Gen­er­al ex­pec­ta­tion is cur­rent mar­gin­al seats will con­tin­ue as mar­gin­als. We will have to de­vise po­lit­i­cal strate­gies to treat with those. Any­one about win­ning elec­tions will fo­cus on mar­gin­als."

Mar­gin­al seats tra­di­tion­al­ly in­clude San Juan/Barataria, St Joseph, Ma­yaro, Tu­na­puna and San Fer­nan­do West."Any bound­ary changes," he added, "may or may not in­spire changes in po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy, de­pend­ing on the na­ture of any re­align­ment."Mooni­lal said the PP planned to hit the road soon and would syn­chro­nise that with com­ple­tion of "our home­work en­sur­ing gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery and a strong im­age, sus­tain­able un­til elec­tion."

He ac­knowl­edged the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), rid­ing a wave of suc­cess af­ter elec­tions ex­ter­nal­ly and in­ter­nal­ly, was press­ing for a snap poll."We are pre­pared for the new low and Gestapo-type cy­ber­spy­ing in­duced by tech­nol­o­gy which will con­tin­ue by those seek­ing po­lit­i­cal cred­it but peo­ple are smart enough to see through this," he said.

PNM vice-chair­man Colm Im­bert, who does not think bound­aries will be changed, based on 20-year his­tor­i­cal trends and 2013 lo­cal gov­ern­ment vot­ing pat­terns, said he ex­pect­ed "we will win most if not all the mar­gin­als."He is par­tic­u­lar­ly op­ti­mistic about San Fer­nan­do West, cur­rent­ly held by the COP's Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, which is per­ceived to be in jeop­ardy ow­ing to steady PNM at­ten­tion, in­clud­ing the PNM's 2013 pos­ses­sion of the San Fer­nan­do Cor­po­ra­tion.

He added: "It's his­tor­i­cal­ly a PNM seat. We usu­al­ly win by 1,000 votes and should win it eas­i­ly. The on­ly way it won't hap­pen is if PNM does some non­sense be­tween now and 2015."(But) PNM's learned its les­son and will nev­er take the pop­u­la­tion for grant­ed again in any elec­tion. We must be mind­ful T&T's a cos­mopoli­tan so­ci­ety, com­pris­ing dif­fer­ent groups and we can't be wrong and strong.

On pos­si­ble al­liances for the PNM, Im­bert said: "We present can­di­dates in all seats. The ques­tion of al­liances will have to wait till elec­tion re­sults ar­rive. If you win a clear ma­jor­i­ty, you are in gov­ern­ment. But hy­po­thet­i­cal­ly, if you don't and there are oth­er par­ties will­ing to join with us to run T&T, that's some­thing to look at."