An­na-Lisa Paul

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is con­fi­dent it will be able to make an im­prove­ment at the polls in the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Al­though he de­clined to say if the par­ty has con­duct­ed any in­ter­nal polls from which they have drawn this con­clu­sion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says they are aim­ing to se­cure more than the 23 they had se­cured dur­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Speak­ing with re­porters fol­low­ing the for­mal open­ing of the Bagatelle Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Diego Mar­tin on Fri­day, Row­ley joked, “The PNM’s polls are on­ly for the PNM.”

How­ev­er, he went on to ex­press con­fi­dence, not just in the par­ty’s abil­i­ty to win the up­com­ing elec­tion, but al­so in the abil­i­ties and ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the cit­i­zen­ry to make the right choice.

He said, “I have con­fi­dence in the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our sys­tem is that not every­one would agree with every­thing you have done but I think the vast ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in the coun­try would ac­knowl­edge that we have gov­erned this coun­try in a very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od and that we have gov­erned it well, and we have made the most of what was avail­able to us, and that we have done so in the in­ter­est of the wider na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.”

An­tic­i­pat­ing their vic­to­ry on Au­gust 10, Row­ley ad­mit­ted while the par­ty had made some changes to its slate of can­di­dates as was ex­pect­ed, the PNM had put forth, “quite an in­ter­est­ing and ef­fec­tive mix”.

“We have got ex­pe­ri­ence, we have got some youth, we have got a fair amount of women, we have got a fair amount of young men, and to­geth­er we pro­vide the coun­try with a body of peo­ple in whom the coun­try can place its trust.”

Row­ley ad­vised, “We are not a kinder­garten class.”

Pressed to say if the par­ty had con­cerns re­gard­ing the al­le­ga­tions of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence that had sur­faced on­line against its Moru­ga/Table­land can­di­date Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, Row­ley dis­missed the un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims as he said, “I don’t take my in­for­ma­tion from so­cial me­dia.

“So­cial me­dia is great tech­nol­o­gy and it rep­re­sents the best and the worst...even mat­ters con­cern­ing me or the Gov­ern­ment, when it comes from so­cial me­dia, I check it first be­fore I ab­sorb it so I am not go­ing to re­fer to any­thing on so­cial me­dia about any­body.”

Asked to pro­vide an up­date re­gard­ing the in­vi­ta­tion that has been ex­tend­ed to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives for elec­tion ob­servers to come to T&T for the elec­tion, Row­ley said, “There is no feed­back to be had just yet.”

He re­it­er­at­ed, “We have made the re­quest to the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at and we have made the re­quest to the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and I ex­pect an an­swer will come to us soon. As long as they are able to put per­son­nel in, the door is open.”

How­ev­er, Row­ley cau­tioned, “But the per­son­nel must get here by Fri­day (Ju­ly 23), once they can get in then and go through the quar­an­tine pe­ri­od to be able to come be­fore the elec­tion to mon­i­tor the prepa­ra­tions and the ac­tu­al polling day, then that would be fine. If the per­son­nel that are ear­marked by the agen­cies, if they can’t get here by that date, then I am afraid if they come...then they will have to go in­to quar­an­tine and do their mon­i­tor­ing from in the quar­an­tine if that is pos­si­ble.”