Con­gress of the Peo­ple po­lit­i­cal leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan has vot­ed for an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty. She cast her bal­lot af­ter mid­day on Mon­day at the San Fer­nan­do Methodist School in San Fer­nan­do for the Spring­vale/Par­adise seat, con­test­ed for the UNC, PNM and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice.

Once a mem­ber of the UNC and lat­er the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Seep­er­sad-Bachan told re­porters that there was no Part­ner­ship.

"That for­mu­la we en­vis­aged when we joined was that it would be a coali­tion but that did not ma­te­ri­alise. What we had was a dom­i­nant par­ty in the Part­ner­ship," she said.

She ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, to hav­ing talks with oth­er emerg­ing par­ties be­fore de­cid­ing which seat her par­ty would con­test.

"Coali­tion pol­i­tics is still rel­e­vant to T&T and that is why we had an arrange­ment," Seep­er­sad-Bachan ex­plained, adding that her arrange­ment was not with the PP.

"The Part­ner­ship end­ed some time ago. It failed and there is no Part­ner­ship. The coun­try will not go for that kind of for­mu­la again. That for­mu­la is out­dat­ed, it did not work. Many saw it as a fail­ure. The Part­ner­ship failed in my view in terms of mov­ing for­ward with the pol­i­tics in T&T," she said.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan added that even though the COP had no can­di­date for Spring­vale/Par­adise, she was com­pelled to ex­er­cise her civic du­ty by vot­ing for an­oth­er par­ty.

"I have to ex­er­cise my de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right. As we al­ways tell peo­ple, we should not dis­en­fran­chise our­selves," she said.

As to which par­ty got her vote, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said, "There were three can­di­dates. I will leave it there. Vot­ing is con­fi­den­tial right? Isn't it? Who I sup­port will be con­fi­den­tial. I am hop­ing that peo­ple will see there is an al­ter­na­tive that could change the po­lit­i­cal land­scape," she not­ed.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the COP did not field a can­di­date for Spring­vale/Par­adise.

"We had dis­cus­sions with oth­er par­ties and we did not field can­di­dates in this area. Go­ing for­ward, there will be more uni­ty among the emerg­ing par­ties once we share that com­mon vi­sion and phi­los­o­phy. We have been out­lin­ing and de­tail­ing our plans in terms of how we are chang­ing T&T."

Seep­er­sad-Bachan said vot­ing went smooth­ly and on­ly one in­ci­dent was re­port­ed to the COP.

In the Curepe area, a UNC can­di­date had placed para­pher­na­lia close to the polling di­vi­sion and af­ter re­port­ing it to the po­lice, the items were re­moved.

MSJ's AB­DU­LAH DID NOT VOTE

Mean­while, MSJ's po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah did not vote yes­ter­day say­ing he could not bring him­self to vote for ei­ther the PNM or the UNC.

"In my elec­toral dis­trict in Preysal, the MSJ doesn't have a can­di­date. Hav­ing said on the cam­paign trail that peo­ple should not vot­er ei­ther the PNM and the UNC, I could not vote be­cause I can­not do some­thing that when I was call­ing on oth­ers to not vote for the PNM or UNC," Ab­du­lah said.

He said the MSJ had a ground cam­paign and be­cause of re­source con­straints it could not field can­di­dates in every area.

He ad­mit­ted to hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­cern­ing field­ing can­di­dates but said there was no iron-clad agree­ment.

"In at least two elec­toral dis­tricts there were COP can­di­dates con­test­ing where the MSJ is. The MSJ has had ab­solute­ly no dis­cus­sion with PNM or UNC, nor will I have any such dis­cus­sion," he said.