Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

The Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) has con­ced­ed de­feat in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions af­ter fail­ing to win any of the 17 dis­tricts it con­test­ed in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and the San Juan/Laven­tille and San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke, who re­flect­ed on the out­come of the elec­tions at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, said the PDP had achieved a “his­toric mile­stone by be­com­ing the first To­ba­go-based par­ty to ac­tive­ly par­tic­i­pate in a sig­nif­i­cant man­ner in an elec­tion on the main­land, specif­i­cal­ly a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.”

He added: “Our re­sponse has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive and en­cour­ag­ing as it re­flects that peo­ple across all elec­toral dis­tricts have shown keen in­ter­est in the PDP’s gov­er­nance pro­pos­als.”

In the elec­tion, the PDP got ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1200 votes.

Ac­cord­ing to Duke, the par­ty’s fo­cus will now shift to the gen­er­al elec­tion.

“Our aim is to make an im­pact in Trinidad and re­gain the two To­ba­go seats. With a po­ten­tial out­come of three or four seats—two in Trinidad and two in To­ba­go—it po­si­tions us to en­gage in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions with the ma­jor­i­ty. We can ad­dress their con­cerns while high­light­ing ours. These con­cerns ex­tend be­yond just To­ba­go and Port-of-Spain,” he said.

“Sim­i­lar to Trinidad, the peo­ple of To­ba­go are al­so part of var­i­ous fan clubs but they be­long to a ma­jor­i­ty group seek­ing trans­for­ma­tive pol­i­tics. Start­ing ear­ly next month, we in­tend to as­sert our pres­ence in To­ba­go vig­or­ous­ly.

“The mes­sage we want to con­vey is that things will not pro­ceed as usu­al. We plan to con­duct an in­tense po­lit­i­cal cam­paign in To­ba­go, striv­ing to bring it back to the promis­ing po­si­tion it held in De­cem­ber 2021 when we ini­ti­at­ed the call for change.”

Duke de­scribed the launch last week­end of the To­ba­go Peo­ple Par­ty led by THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine as “more of a par­ty an­chor­ing.”

“They have an­chored them­selves on the road they con­struct­ed which has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed—a sym­bol­ic re­flec­tion of what might be ex­pect­ed from this par­ty. For near­ly two years, their ef­forts have yield­ed min­i­mal re­sults. They pro­pose ad­dress­ing is­sues on­ly af­ter win­ning na­tion­al elec­tions, which con­tra­dicts the man­date they claimed to up­hold. The peo­ple de­serve more,” he said.

Duke, who said he is ad­vo­cat­ing for gen­uine re­form in lo­cal gov­ern­ment as well as au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go, added: “A pri­ma­ry is­sue that both the PDP and the so-called in­de­pen­dence move­ment, in­clud­ing the TPP, aimed to ad­dress was au­ton­o­my. Au­ton­o­my should have been the cor­ner­stone em­pow­er­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans with more in­flu­ence over mat­ters af­fect­ing them. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I’d like to touch on the con­cept of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form in Trinidad.

“While democ­ra­cy is a pro­gres­sive ide­ol­o­gy, in line with our par­ty’s name, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots, it’s im­per­a­tive that Trinidad and To­ba­go em­brace par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy as the foun­da­tion of our elec­toral and gov­er­nance sys­tems. It ap­pears that peo­ple have re­signed them­selves to po­lit­i­cal par­ties’ sway—vic­to­ries and de­feats. As ob­served in Trinidad, po­lit­i­cal par­ties have be­come akin to fan clubs. The par­ty pre­vails, whether red or yel­low.”