Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

One­time UNC coun­cil­lor Safraz Ali, who was re­ject­ed by the UNC’s Screen­ing team for the El So­cor­ro/Aranguez North seat, says he’ll now be con­test­ing that seat for Wat­son Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ot­ic (PDP) par­ty in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion.

Ali con­firmed yes­ter­day that he’ll be fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers this morn­ing to con­test the seat on a PDP tick­et. He said Duke is ex­pect­ed to ac­com­pa­ny him to file his pa­pers.

Ali is ex­pect­ed to be one of three can­di­dates the PDP will present for the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion dis­trict.

PDP had opened its first Trinidad of­fice in Barataria in April 2022. Last week, PDP chair­man Sean Nedd said PDP is al­so ex­pect­ed to present Port-of-Spain cor­po­ra­tion can­di­dates.

The PDP is one of at least five po­lit­i­cal par­ties whose can­di­dates will file nom­i­na­tion pa­pers to­day for the Au­gust 14 LG elec­tion. Oth­ers in­clude the PNM, UNC/NTA/MND ac­com­mo­da­tion, and the PEP/Re­unit­ed Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion al­liance.

PNM pre­sent­ed can­di­dates yes­ter­day. The UNC presents its can­di­dates tonight at Na­pari­ma Boys’ High School au­di­to­ri­um. The NTA presents its can­di­dates this af­ter­noon at the Queen’s Park Oval, Port-of-Spain.

Yes­ter­day, UNC ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials con­firmed Ali wasn’t se­lect­ed for the El So­cor­ro/Aranguez North seat he’d sought since the in­cum­bent, who’d served there since 2019, was re­turned.

Ali said yes­ter­day that he’d sup­port­ed UNC for 28 years and was its coun­cil­lor for San Juan East from 2016 to 2019.

The seat was di­vid­ed by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), cre­at­ing the new El So­cor­ro/Aranguez North seat. Ali sought to con­test it for the 2019 LG elec­tion but wasn’t cho­sen by UNC.

Ali said he re­mained with the UNC and again sought the can­di­da­cy for the up­com­ing LG poll.

Ali added, “But I was told last Tues­day that I wasn’t se­lect­ed and the UNC in­cum­bent would con­test it again - even while I was born and grew up in that area, eh and the par­ty had seen all the hard work I’d done be­fore,” he added.

He not­ed he’s a man­age­ment com­mit­tee mem­ber of the Nur E Is­lam mosque, which he said has the biggest ja­maat in T&T and is al­so in­volved in oth­er work in the area.

Ali, who’d been a San Juan con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, sub­mit­ted a res­ig­na­tion let­ter last Fri­day to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kan­hai.

Ali’s let­ter stat­ed, “The par­ty has over the years faced many de­feats at all lev­els of pol­i­tics, which was avoid­able if the par­ty had made dif­fer­ent choic­es, how­ev­er that is done and dust­ed. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is no longer. The great par­ty I joined and served. I can no longer, with good con­science re­main, in an en­ti­ty that has lost its moor­ings of ser­vice to the peo­ple.”

Ali added, “Some­one from the PDP sub­se­quent­ly con­tact­ed me for talks and I re­alised their ob­jec­tives are in align­ment to bring bet­ter gov­er­nance and rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the peo­ple. I like the way Mr Duke is on the ground work­ing for the peo­ple.”