JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Nikoli eyes election with own party

by

Joel Julien
2354 days ago
20190127

For­mer tem­po­rary In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor and Youth Ad­vo­cate Nikoli Ed­wards is ex­pect­ed to con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tions with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty of his found­ing. This ac­cord­ing to a source close to Ed­wards who spoke to Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

“Nikoli has al­ways been pas­sion­ate about so­cial change, and he has gained a lot of cred­i­bil­i­ty among civ­il so­ci­ety groups and youth, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter he had an im­pres­sive stint in the Par­lia­ment,” the source stat­ed.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­wards for con­fir­ma­tion, but he said he was “not pre­pared to com­ment on this news just yet.”

Ques­tioned about whether or not he was be­ing en­cour­aged to con­test the 2020 elec­tions, Ed­wards ex­plained: “I have al­ways been pushed by friends, fam­i­ly, young peo­ple and just mem­bers of the pub­lic who have heard me speak—to ‘hur­ry up and get in gov­ern­ment’ to be able to put my so­lu­tions for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment to work.”

Ed­wards joked that on­ly “time and sound ad­vice” would de­ter­mine what his fu­ture in pol­i­tics would be.

Re­fus­ing to give fur­ther de­tails, our source in­di­cat­ed that it ap­peared that Ed­wards was mak­ing moves to­ward launch­ing a par­ty, a date for which had not yet been con­firmed, “I’m not sure when ex­act­ly, I don’t think the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions is on his radar but def­i­nite­ly 2020 seems to be the plan.”

Guardian Me­dia was able to con­firm that Ed­wards ap­plied to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion to have a sym­bol as­signed to the “Pro­gres­sive Par­ty.”

In Gazette No 111 of 2017 dat­ed Oc­to­ber 23, 2017 no­tice had been giv­en that a sym­bol was as­signed to the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty.

Ed­wards was ap­point­ed as the youngest tem­po­rary sen­a­tor by then Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona in 2017 and de­bat­ed sev­er­al pieces of leg­is­la­tion dur­ing that year.

In 2018, he was ap­point­ed as a mem­ber of the Pro­cure­ment Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go and al­so re­ceived the Na­tion­al Youth Award for Youth Ac­tivism in the same year.

He has been no stranger to the pub­lic hav­ing worked in both pri­vate and state me­dia, and he of­ten com­ments pub­licly on var­i­ous so­cial and po­lit­i­cal is­sues.

The grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine served as Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer twice, Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion Rep­re­sen­ta­tive and Sec­re­tary of the Guild of Stu­dents over the course of three years and was elect­ed as Vice Chair­per­son Pol­i­cy, Ad­vo­ca­cy and Projects of the Com­mon­wealth Youth Coun­cil which serves 1.2 bil­lion young peo­ple across the Com­mon­wealth.

In 2016, he found­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go Youth Con­ven­tion and served as its Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­per­son.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Ed­wards’ reg­u­lar ad­dress is in the Oropouche East con­stituen­cy, but he has been re­sid­ing in the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy for the past four years while at­tend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and there­fore may con­sid­er ei­ther con­stituen­cy to con­test the 2020 elec­tions.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored