Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Af­ter in­di­ca­tions of a win by the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty/Civic (PPP/C) in Mon­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion in Guyana, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal says that “with­out a doubt,” Guyana will be a key play­er in T&T’s en­er­gy thrust.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports from agen­cies in Guyana con­firmed that de­spite a low vot­er turnout, the in­cum­bent PPP/, led by Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, was set to in­crease its seats from 33 to 37.

Of­fi­cial re­sults were ex­pect­ed to be de­clared by to­day. Ali is ex­pect­ed to be sworn in by to­mor­row, it is un­der­stood.

Yes­ter­day, UNC deputy leader Mooni­lal said, “I pre­fer to com­ment af­ter the of­fi­cial re­sults are de­clared, but with­out a doubt, Guyana will be a key play­er in our en­er­gy thrust. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th) Row­ley and his bunch made a mess of our en­er­gy re­la­tions with Guyana.

“We are well poised now to clean up that mess and ad­vance our en­er­gy agen­da as man­dat­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.”

Among the five oth­er par­ties which con­test­ed, the for­mer Op­po­si­tion, A Par­ty for Na­tion­al Uni­ty (AP­NU), led by Aubrey Nor­ton, which held 31 seats, lost a sig­nif­i­cant amount, said to be al­most 20.

Guyana’s Op­po­si­tion ahead will be formed by bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man Azrud­din Mo­hamed’s new par­ty, We In­vest in Na­tion­hood (WIN), which took ap­prox­i­mate­ly 18 seats, ac­cord­ing to Guyana sources.

A Cari­com Elec­tion Ob­serv­er Mis­sion (CEOM) to Guyana’s elec­tions said yes­ter­day that tab­u­la­tion of re­sults was on­go­ing then, and the team has giv­en a thumbs-up to the con­duct of the polls, con­grat­u­lat­ing Guyana’s Elec­tions Com­mis­sion and au­thor­i­ties.

CEOM Chief of Mis­sion, Josephine Tamai (Be­lize’s Chief Elec­tions Of­fi­cer), gave the mis­sion’s over­all im­pres­sion af­ter the pre­lim­i­nary as­sess­ment at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing.

“The CEOM is of the view that on elec­tion day, vot­ers were able to ex­er­cise their fran­chise in a peace­ful, or­der­ly man­ner with­out sig­nif­i­cant in­ci­dent. The team ob­served no signs of in­tim­i­da­tion, ha­rass­ment or cam­paign­ing in­tend­ed to in­flu­ence or ob­struct the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process,” Tamai said.