Senior Political Reporter
Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Phillip Alexander, has slammed People’s National Movement PRO Faris Al-Rawi’s post-election assessment as “nonsense.”
In a Facebook post yesterday, Alexander said: “In an attempt at damage control PNM PRO Al-Rawi has suggested that the massive victory enjoyed by the UNC Coalition was due to a ‘swing vote’ in 2010, but that the swing vote ‘stayed home’ in 2025. What absolute nonsense. The numbers on both occasions are quite clear.”
On Friday, Al-Rawi said PNM groups in the 41 constituencies are already engaged in assessments of the April 28 general election defeat by the United National Congress, and so far, he said, it was declared that the UNC ran a better social media campaign than the PNM.
Al-Rawi said so during a briefing at Balisier House.
He said the PNM is already engaged in its respective constituency post-mortems.
On the election outcome, he said, “The PNM knows where our 100,000 people (who didn’t vote for the party) are—they’re home and they said quite loudly, ‘we not voting for you, we’re not happy with what happened.’
“In San Fernando West (which I held for 10 years and lost), we’ve done our post-mortem. San Fernando West demonstrated that (UNC MP) Dr (Michael) Dowlath won the seat with a vote lower than the loser normally takes—my people just didn’t turn up.”
“Both of us received the lowest votes ever. Those votes were lower than the 1971 vote when there was a ‘Stay Home’ campaign. It’s demonstrative of a lot in our society,” Al-Rawi said.
Al-Rawi said his votes from 10,000 in 2015 went to 8,600 in 2020 and the losers were all under 7,200.
He admitted that UNC conducted a better social media campaign.
“There are a lot of things the party definitely needs to improve on … we did well in past campaigns in social/media, but on this occasion, we failed and it showed.”
However, Alexander has pounced on Al-Rawi’s explanation.
Taking to Facebook, he said that while the PNM held its ground in 2010, in 2025 two different phenomena coincided to hand the UNC and its Coalition of Interests a “massive victory.“
“The swing vote did vote with the UNC, increasing their numbers by more than fifteen per cent over 2020, but there was also the effect of disgust the rank and file PNM felt for their party that the PNM seems very motivated to distract the country from.
“There’s a saying that all you get if you put pearls and a dress on a pig is a well-dressed pig. Mr Al-Rawi could dress this pig however he likes, the fact remains, over a third of traditional PNM supporters were so disgusted with (Dr) Keith Rowley, Stuart Young and crew that they didn’t vote at all. That the PNM was rejected by its own. That no one accepted the hijack of the then government by one per cent forces and the monied class aligned with Rowley and Young.”
Alexander added, “Watching PNM’s PRO attempt to sell us this bill of goods while his party crumbles around him, while its appointed leader is silenced and its anointed leader still holds public press conferences in a PNM shirt means that the PNM still has not faced reality. For a T&T fed up of the spin and lies from a government that abused, mistreated and insulted the public for almost a decade, none of this is a bad thing.”
