The Democratic Party of T&T (DPTT) plans to contest all the seats in the upcoming general election. However, the party has not begun the screening process for potential candidates. The DPTT held a press conference yesterday at the Chaconia Hotel, Saddle Road, Maraval, where it announced that it would be pursuing all 41 constituencies but it did not have any prospective candidates yet.
Party leader Steve Alvarez said despite many people in the country believing the country had only two parties, there should be a third party that was not affiliated with race-based voting. “Trinidad and Tobago is divided among two major ethnicities and represented by two major political parties. “The general election, they surmise, will depend on which of these two groups prevails in the marginal seats where neither of them has an overwhelming majority.
“While that may be a fire analysis of the electorate, it will be very sad, almost tragic, if we were to accept that as the norm and do nothing about it,” Alvarez said. The DPTT has been in existence since 2002 and began contesting ten seats. However, they never won a seat. Alvarez maintained that the party would not form any alliance with a major political party. In July 2007 it was offered an alliance with the UNC. “There is a clear indication that alliances for the sake of winning a general election cannot change the way we manage our country,” he said.
Alvarez said the DPTT planned to fix the problems T&T had by working at a community level. “The Democratic Party of Trinidad and Tobago is not promising you an impossible dream. We are about outlining realistic objectives and simple ways of achieving them,” he said. Safe communities, through a restructuring of the Police Service, improvement of the public sector and a rail service from Port-of-Spain to Arima and San Fernando, were among some of the issues the DPTT intended to tackle.
Alvarez claimed the DPTT did not have any official financial backer but relied on donations from the community. The DPTT does not intend to screen candidates for this year’s general election until Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announces the general election. He said the DPTT was open to all people in the country who wanted to make a difference to run for a Member of Parliament.