Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

In Ch­agua­nas

There was a par­ty-like at­mos­phere as can­di­dates filed nom­i­na­tions to com­pete in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions (LGE) in Ch­agua­nas.

In the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed and Coun­cil­lor Adri­an Ali of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) filed nom­i­na­tions at the Munroe Road Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, an event that was marked with tas­sa drum­ming and a long line of sup­port­ers fill­ing the streets.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the UNC’s vic­to­ry in the Cen­tral re­gion once again. How­ev­er, he raised con­cerns about the lo­ca­tion of the of­fice of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer in the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough. Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, the place­ment of each elec­toral dis­trict far apart seemed like a tac­tic to di­vide the show of sup­port that typ­i­cal­ly flows on Nom­i­na­tion Day.

Ali, of Munroe Road/Ca­roni Sa­van­nah, ac­knowl­edged the in­con­ve­nience caused by can­di­dates not be­ing able to file in one lo­ca­tion but ex­pressed de­ter­mi­na­tion for uni­ty as they hit the streets of Ch­agua­nas.

Less ex­cite­ment in Tu­na­puna but PNM con­fi­dent

But the mood in the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion was not as ex­hil­a­rat­ing as in Ch­agua­nas.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to Maria Bap­tiste, the PNM can­di­date for Bon Air Arou­ca/Cane Farm, at the Ed­die Hart Ground, Tacarigua, mo­ments af­ter she and her team filed their nom­i­na­tions. Bap­tiste ex­pressed ex­cite­ment for the up­com­ing elec­tions and her con­fi­dence in the PNM’s suc­cess.

She high­light­ed the pres­ence of key sup­port­ers, in­clud­ing her MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, con­stituen­cy chair­man, moth­er, and nu­mer­ous fol­low­ers.

Robin­son-Reg­is, the MP for Arou­ca/Mal­oney, stood in sup­port of Bap­tiste, and ex­pressed con­fi­dence in the PNM’s abil­i­ty to win the elec­tions. She high­light­ed the good work done by for­mer coun­cil­lors, on­go­ing walk­a­bouts, and the pos­i­tive feed­back from the burgess­es. She al­so not­ed the ab­sence of the UNC-NTA com­bi­na­tion in pre­sent­ing their can­di­dates, sug­gest­ing that the PNM might al­ready have an ad­van­tage.

Mar­vin Gon­za­les, the MP for Bon Air/Lopinot, voiced sur­prise at the ab­sence of an op­po­si­tion pres­ence in cer­tain ar­eas. He ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in the lack of al­ter­na­tive poli­cies and pro­grammes from the op­po­si­tion par­ties and at­trib­uted it to the cit­i­zens of T&T hav­ing al­ready re­ject­ed them. Gon­za­les crit­i­cised their style of pol­i­tics and their at­tacks on cit­i­zens, sug­gest­ing that they have failed to gain sup­port.