DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les has al­leged that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) se­cured vic­to­ry in the April 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion with fi­nan­cial back­ing from mem­bers of the crim­i­nal un­der­world in ex­change for deals.

Gon­za­les made the claim while push­ing back against ac­cu­sa­tions by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the PNM’s head­quar­ters was built us­ing drug mon­ey—an al­le­ga­tion she made dur­ing her Par­lia­men­tary ad­dress last Fri­day.

Re­act­ing to the state­ment, Gon­za­les con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar for us­ing par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to make what he de­scribed as un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims against the PNM, call­ing the re­marks “scan­dalous.”

How­ev­er, he al­so made al­le­ga­tions of his own, sug­gest­ing that dur­ing his tenure as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter, he re­ceived in­tel­li­gence re­ports in­di­cat­ing that crim­i­nals had helped fi­nance the UNC’s elec­tion cam­paign.

He point­ed to claims that as much as $17 mil­lion was spent in the San­gre Grande con­stituen­cy dur­ing the cam­paign.

“We got in­for­ma­tion, it’s the same thing that hap­pened in some of the mar­gin­al seats in Tu­na­puna and what have you, where there was strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the UNC and the crim­i­nal el­e­ments to win some of these seats. And that is the rea­son why this Gov­ern­ment can­not gov­ern with­out a state of emer­gency be­cause many of them can­not walk their con­stituen­cies.”

Gon­za­les al­so re­vealed that the PNM was told that if they had ac­cept­ed sim­i­lar arrange­ments, the out­come of the elec­tion might have been dif­fer­ent.

Calls for cam­paign fi­nance re­form resur­face

Gon­za­les’ com­ments have re­newed de­bate over po­lit­i­cal fi­nanc­ing, with some an­a­lysts ar­gu­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy high­lights the need for stronger cam­paign fi­nance re­form, while oth­ers say le­gal ac­tion could al­so be tak­en now.

“These are all is­sues of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice and no po­lit­i­cal par­ty, while they go and yap, yap... they are not do­ing any­thing to bring peo­ple to ac­count,” said po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath.

Dr Ra­goonath al­so lament­ed the un­will­ing­ness of suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions to pass cru­cial cam­paign fi­nance re­form leg­is­la­tion to lev­el the play­ing field be­tween small­er par­ties and more es­tab­lished ones, as well as min­imise cor­rup­tion dur­ing the post-elec­tion pe­ri­od.

Sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments were ex­pressed by po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad.

“When these par­ties are in pow­er, the same par­ties mak­ing the al­le­ga­tions, they’re very hes­i­tant to pass these re­form mea­sures. So you nev­er see this leg­is­la­tion com­ing to the Par­lia­ment to deal with trans­paren­cy in cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, that is one of the things, what rules and reg­u­la­tions should guide the fi­nanc­ing, how much they’re al­lowed to take from whom, who should they take from, who should they not. These are the kind of re­form mea­sures that we’re talk­ing about, but par­tic­u­lar­ly trans­paren­cy,” she said.

Mean­while, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day has crit­i­cised both the PNM and UNC, cau­tion­ing that claims of this na­ture should not be treat­ed flip­pant­ly.

“If there is cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion, it should be ex­am­ined by law en­force­ment so the coun­try can know the truth. The pub­lic is tired of this cy­cle. Ac­cu­sa­tions are made every few years about who is fund­ing who, yet nei­ther par­ty has shown any re­al in­ter­est in fix­ing the sys­tem,” she said.

Nev­er­the­less, Pan­day re­it­er­at­ed that her par­ty sup­ports cam­paign fi­nance re­form.

“The re­al­i­ty is, we still have no mean­ing­ful cam­paign fi­nance laws re­quir­ing dis­clo­sure of po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions, spend­ing lim­its or in­de­pen­dent over­sight. That trans­paren­cy is nec­es­sary not on­ly to pre­vent crim­i­nal in­flu­ence in pol­i­tics but al­so to pro­tect par­ties and in­di­vid­u­als from smear cam­paigns about who may be fund­ing them.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and UNC PRO Dr Kirk Meighoo for com­ment, but nei­ther re­spond­ed up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.