No LGE win but PEP 'ready for general election'

Political leader of the Progressive Empowerment Party (PEP) Phillip Edward Alexander says while the party was not able to secure any districts in the local government elections, it does have reason to celebrate.

"We are now established as the third largest party in the country and that there are no others besides the PNM, UNC, PEP going forward to 2025. There are no other horses in the race so the job now is to get us ready for victory," Alexander told a handful of supporters on Monday night at the party's headquarters in Port of Spain.

He said when the local government election date was announced in June, the party was focusing on the 2025 general election.

"We were creating our shadow MPs and launching them on the ground, putting them into the communities and getting them busy so the public would have known quantities to compare and contrast and vote for at an election day."

Alexander said while the party is not highly-funded, it does the most with the least for the most amount of people.

He said the party's members were responsible for all aspects of their campaign. Despite this, Alexander said the party fought its campaign on "honesty, on integrity.

"We made sure our ethics was put to front, that the public knew, because they saw others capitulate to the ease of simple alliances and accommodations and other different ways of saying they can't do it alone."

He said the PEP wants to present a strong alternative to the "politics of race and corruption."

Conceding the loss his party faced, Alexander said, "2023 gave us no districts, it gave us no corporations but it gave us a lot of pride. 2023 gave us no bragging rights to come away from but it gave us a Trinidad and Tobago that knows now for certain that the Progressive Empowerment Party is not going anywhere, we are here to represent, we are here to grow, we're worth the vote."