STEPHON NICHOLAS

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe has re­fused to yield any ground to ex-mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris de­spite a seem­ing dis­par­i­ty in vis­i­ble sup­port ahead of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the PNM in­ter­nal elec­tions on April 26.

Cud­joe ar­rived at the par­ty’s Scar­bor­ough head­quar­ters yes­ter­day by her­self to file her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for po­lit­i­cal leader. A sprin­kling of sup­port­ers gath­ered ear­li­er to await her ar­rival and clapped as she ex­it­ed the of­fice up­on com­plet­ing the process.

Her en­trance was in stark con­trast to Mor­ris’ the day be­fore, when a drone cap­tured his flag-wav­ing sup­port­ers ac­com­pa­nied by dancers walk­ing to the head­quar­ters.

Mor­ris is lead­ing a 16-mem­ber slate dubbed Team Uni­ty, con­test­ing all po­si­tions in the elec­tions ex­cept op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer.

Cud­joe said there was an ini­tial dis­cus­sion about Mor­ris join­ing her cam­paign to vie for chair­man of the par­ty, but he de­cid­ed to chal­lenge her in­stead.

The for­mer sports min­is­ter said she re­mains con­fi­dent de­spite not hav­ing a slate or the back­ing of par­ty big­wigs such as for­mer chief sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, ex-par­ty leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine, ex-sport sec­re­tary Huey Cadette and ex-sec­re­tary Clarence Ja­cob.

“I am not a one-man army. I have a cou­ple sup­port­ers with me, the per­sons who work and do the strat­e­gy with me. It is a very hum­ble cam­paign. I’m work­ing with the av­er­age PN­Mite, the man on the ground,” she said.

She said she is giv­ing a voice to the PNM sup­port­ers who want to be seen and heard.

“It is not on­ly about the stal­warts, the old guard, the big­wigs, the ex­pe­ri­enced per­sons, the of­fice­hold­ers. It’s about the every­day man who are go­ing to make the de­ci­sion about the di­rec­tion of the par­ty go­ing for­ward.”

She al­so in­tends to work with many peo­ple on Team Uni­ty’s slate, as well as a few in­de­pen­dents.

“In this bat­tle or in this ex­er­cise I would want to call it, there is no oth­er side. We are the PNM and on April 26, we will all be the PNM.”

Mean­while, Mor­ris said the nom­i­na­tion process went smooth­ly for his slate.

He said the ob­jec­tive is to uni­fy, re-en­er­gise, reignite and re­build the par­ty from the ground up.

“I feel ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent that go­ing for­ward, we would be able to con­vince the mem­ber­ship, and Team Uni­ty would lead the re­nais­sance of the PNM in the To­ba­go space over the next four years.”

Mor­ris said re­cent walk­a­bouts have reaf­firmed his be­lief that he is the man to lead the par­ty.

PNM To­ba­go

Coun­cil in debt

Sim­i­lar to the rul­ing To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), Cud­joe said the To­ba­go Coun­cil is in se­ri­ous debt fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 12 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

Ser­vice providers re­cent­ly protest­ed out­side the TPP of­fice in Scar­bor­ough, de­mand­ing pay­ment for work done dur­ing the THA elec­tions and the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Cud­joe said her sim­ple cam­paign re­flects the re­al­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

“We must ad­mit and ac­knowl­edge the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil, we owe a lot of peo­ple right now and if I had mon­ey, it would be to pay them.”

She said the Coun­cil will seek to raise the fi­nances to han­dle those ex­pens­es.

“Dr (Er­ic) Williams said one of our main re­spon­si­bil­i­ties is to fi­nance our own par­ty, so you would be a pup­pet to no­body.”