The Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) said that 161 candidates, representing 17 political parties and three independents, had been nominated Friday to contest the elections.
Prime Minister Stuart Young called the elections four months ahead of the second anniversary of the PNM’s victory in the 2020 general election, and candidates Friday paid the TT$5,000 (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) required to ensure their names were placed on the ballot paper in carnival style celebrations.
Young, who is contesting the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West seat, which he won in 2015, told reporters after being nominated, “I am ready, Red ready and responsible.”
UNC leader Kamla Persad Bissessar told reporters she was confident that the party would be victorious at the polls despite the controversy linked to the selection of candidates.
“The screening committee, in its wisdom, made the best choices it felt would be important to get a victory on the 28th …and there were some new faces brought in,” she told reporters after filing her nomination papers for the Siparia constituency.
The UNC, which has named 34 candidates for the 39 seats in Trinidad, has entered into a coalition with several smaller opposition parties and at least two trade unions to contest the elections.
Apart from the PNM and the UNC, Mickela Panday, the daughter of the late prime minister Basdeo Panday, will contest the Couva North seat, which her father had held for 34 years, as she leads her Patriotic Front into battle. The party has nominated 37 candidates.
Panday, the founding leader of the UNC and parliamentary representative from 1976 to 210, lost the party’s leadership to Persad Bissessar in January 2014.
Panday, who died in the United States on January 1, 2024, at the age of 90, had supported his daughter’s unsuccessful bid to enter Parliament in the 2015 general election.
Her opponents will be the UNC’s deputy leader, Jearlean John, and the PNM’s newcomer, Brent Maraj.
“Yes, it is very emotional, but it is not just about honoring a legacy; it’s ushering a new era into politics,” Panday said after filing her nomination papers.
Former police commissioner Gary Griffith, who is leading the 17 National Transformation Alliance (NTA) candidates into the election, expressed his disappointment with the carnival atmosphere that prevailed during the nomination process for the St Joseph seat.
Griffith, who is trying to unseat Health Minister Terrance Deyalsing, told reporters, “This is a banana republic. You are offering yourself to the country for service. You are supposed to be humble. You have to turn up with fanfare and blowing trumpets. This is arrogance.”
But Deyalsingh told reporters, “This is a free country,” and the carnival-style activities were not confined to the St Joseph constituency.
In Tobago, where the PNM has been successful in controlling the two seats in the last two general elections, a challenge will come from the Tobago People’s Party(TPP), headed by the Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly (THA), Farley Chavez Augustine, and the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), headed by trade unionist Watson Duke.
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