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.