Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Re­build­ing will be the mantra for the new­ly-elect­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s To­ba­go Coun­cil, as it hopes to move for­ward af­ter ty­ing and even­tu­al­ly suf­fer­ing a land­slide de­feat in last year’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

Speak­ing as he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vot­ing process yes­ter­day, for­mer THA Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis, who was was un­op­posed for the To­ba­go Coun­cil’s po­lit­i­cal leader in yes­ter­day’s elec­tion, ac­knowl­edged the need to re­jeu­vante the To­ba­go arm of the PNM fol­low­ing the 14-1 de­feat to the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots last De­cem­ber.

“It is a great chal­lenge but the peo­ple with­in this par­ty are not short on tenac­i­ty, we are not short on hope, we are not short on courage and we are not short on the will­ing­ness to do the work. So I have the con­fi­dence that the ex­ec­u­tive, sup­port­ed by the mem­ber­ship of the par­ty, will, in fact, do what is nec­es­sary to en­sure that we are able to re­build and not just re­build but re­build to the ex­tent that we can once again ap­peal to the To­ba­go elec­torate as an al­ter­na­tive gov­ern­ment in the To­ba­go space,” he said.

First on the agen­da for Den­nis to­ward this goal is speak­ing with the par­ty’s mem­ber­ship.

“I feel the need for the par­ty to talk to the peo­ple of To­ba­go once again, as we’ve been do­ing all along but I think we need to have a fresh con­ver­sa­tion with the peo­ple,” he said.

He al­so said changes need to be made with­in the par­ty. As part of this, he said an eval­u­a­tion will be made on where it went wrong to cost it the lead­er­ship of the is­land.

He said he in­tends to bring an “all-in­clu­sive” lead­er­ship that will unite the par­ty and its mem­ber­ship for the road ahead.

Af­ter cast­ing his vote, cur­rent THA Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris told re­porters that de­spite last year’s blow by the PDP, he be­lieves the par­ty can re­cov­er.

“We got an over­whelm­ing re­jec­tion from the To­ba­go elec­torate and it means that we have to do the in­tro­spec­tion as a par­ty. We have to do the re­build­ing and we have to give To­ba­go a new and al­ter­na­tive op­tion go­ing for­ward,” Mor­ris said.

For­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine de­clined to con­test an­oth­er term af­ter last year’s re­sound­ing de­feat at the polls.

Al­though vot­ing end­ed at 6 pm yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, re­sults had not been re­leased up to press time.

Vy­ing for par­ty chair­man were Huey Cadette and Learie Paul. Nicole Hen­ry, Steve Wal­dron and Charles Adams con­test­ed for the po­si­tion of vice-chair. It was al­so a three-way race for youth of­fi­cer with An­dre Bak­er, Stephon Isaac and Quin­cy Trim. In the race for labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer were Kev­ern Phillips and Ken­neth Thomas.

Un­op­posed in PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil in­ter­nal elec­tion were:

An­cil Den­nis - Po­lit­i­cal Leader

Ka­maria Lon­don - La­dy Vice-Chair­man

Ke­ston Williams - As­sis­tant Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary

Shomari Hec­tor - Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer

Maxs­lon Roberts - Trea­sur­er

Aisha Mc Knight - Re­search Of­fi­cer

Ger­ald Brown - Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer

Monique Per­reira - So­cial Me­dia Of­fi­cer

Kurt Wil­son - Elec­tions Of­fi­cer

Pe­ter Gray - Field Of­fi­cer

La­toya Hors­ford - Wel­fare Of­fi­cer

An­cil Thorne - Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer