Rowley wins new term as Trinidad and Tobago prime minister. Opposition demands recount
Voters in oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago have returned to power the government of Prime Minister Keith Rowley for five more years in Monday’s general elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But main opposition leader and former Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is contesting the tight race, demanding a recount in three marginal Parliament seats separating her United National Congress, UNC, from Rowley’s People National Movement, PNM.
“The battle was so close that we are not officially conceding until we get the results of the recounts we’ve demanded in three key marginal constituencies,” Persad-Bissessar posted on her Facebook page Tuesday following the announcement that PNM candidates had won 22 seats in Parliament while the UNC won 19.
Taking a swipe at Rowley, who first won office in 2015, Persad-Bissessar said as an opposition party, the UNC has served the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago “more than the Rowley regime in every possible way — despite them having access to our State resources.”
“Rest assured that we will continue to do this without fail at every step of the way in this new Parliamentary term,” she told supporters.
For now, Persad-Bissessar’s unprecedented decision to not concede defeat in one of the region’s most stable democracies, where a new government has always taken the reins of governing the day after the vote, means that Rowley cannot appoint a new cabinet until a winner is officially declared.
Some analysts call the move a risky one for Persad-Bissessar, who was forced to fight back accusations that she was trying to divide the country’s 1.3 million citizens, who are mostly of Afro-Caribbean and East Indian descent, by referring to Rowley as a “black man on the other side” during a campaign speech. Persad-Bissessar, who is of East Indian descent, insisted that she had referred to Rowley as “a blank man.” She said Rowley was the one trying to sow divisions.
In a Monday radio broadcast, veteran Trinidadian journalist Rennie Bishop said the elections should be a lesson to all politicians trying to divide a nation occupied by many ethnicities.
”Those who seek to trade in class, cast, color, variation of color are people who need to grow up, learn that the world is moving on,” Bishop said. “It is a new world, a new era, a new time and a new challenge for this nation.”
In addition to the accusations of race baiting, Persad-Bissessar and the UNC also faced questions about corruption amid a police investigation involving members of her UNC government between 2010-15.
For his part, Rowley faced questions about Trinidad’s relationship with Venezuela, which included a March 27 visit to the twin-island republic by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez that caught the ire of the Trump administration. The U.S. again signaled its displeasure when reports surfaced that an April 21 fuel shipment from Paria Fuel Trading Company that left Trinidad and Tobago for Aruba may have ended up in Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Rowley was also criticized for not having international observers overseeing the vote.
Should the PNM’s victory over the UNC stand, Rowley will have a fresh mandate. But he also faces a seriously reduced majority in Parliament as Trinidad and Tobago, long considered the cash cow of the Caribbean due to its oil and natural gas reserves, faces the economic fallout of COVID-19 and the worldwide drop in fuel prices.
Like several of its neighbors, it has begun to see a spike in coronavirus cases after they had been holding steady. The country has confirmed 280 COVID-19 cases and eight deaths.
During his victory speech Monday night, Rowley recognized the tough road ahead. He told a small group of supporters in the capital, Port-of-Spain, that while the PNM had won the general elections “against all odds in a most difficult situation,” the eastern Caribbean nation and its people “have difficult days ahead.”
In addition to Trinidad, general elections have taken place in the region in St. Kitts and Nevis, Suriname and the Dominican Republic amid the surging COVID-19 pandemic. Guyana, which went to the polls in early March, held a recount and recently settled a months-long crisis over the vote.
Late Tuesday, Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness, appearing at a special sitting of the House of Representatives while wearing his Jamaica Labor Party’s signature green, announced general elections will take place September 3.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 2:15 PM.
