RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

The po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) is threat­en­ing to sue the State over not hav­ing enough time to pre­pare for Nom­i­na­tion Day and the launch of their can­di­dates for the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions on Au­gust 14.

This was dis­closed by Phillip Alexan­der dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence held on Mon­day at its head­quar­ters at Vic­to­ria Square in Port-of-Spain.

Alexan­der called for fixed dates for all elec­tions in T&T.

"It is some­thing that the Par­lia­ment needs to take se­ri­ous­ly and if the Par­lia­ment doesn't take it se­ri­ous­ly in the first few sit­tings of the new Par­lia­men­tary agen­da, we, the PEP, will mo­bilise re­sources to take this mat­ter be­fore the courts be­cause Trinidad and To­ba­go re­wards cer­tain of­fice hold­ers with ad­vance knowl­edge of an elec­tion to the dis­ad­van­tage of oth­ers," Alexan­der said.

"The cur­rent rul­ing par­ty was able to have a fan­cy event at NA­PA and present all of their can­di­dates in lo­go-pre­pared shirts and every­body watch­ing this press con­fer­ence would know that all of that takes time. It takes time to get can­di­dates, screen them, get their shirt sizes, send those shirts to screen print and get them em­broi­dered. They had ad­vanced knowl­edge."

Alexan­der said they had to work for three days round the clock and faced hic­cups to pre­pare for Nom­i­na­tion Day.

He said they were able to nom­i­nate 61 can­di­dates but will know the fi­nal fig­ure of how many can­di­dates were able to suc­cess­ful­ly file as the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion of­fi­cials are still re­view­ing some of the nom­i­nees' pa­pers.