General Elections victory

He was addressing supporters at the PNM’s campaign offices shortly after elections results showed that the party’s candidate, Ivan Sinclair, had defeated his nearest rival, the UNC’s Christine Ann Rogers-Deonarinesingh, by 454 votes on Monday night.

Manning, who praised the combined efforts of several constituency executives and councillors for securing victory in the district, also reminded supporters of the electoral defeats of 1986 and 1987 when the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) scored a resounding 33-3 victory in Parliament and wrested control of the regional corporation bodies from the George Chambers-led Government.

"But I must tell you that that has clearly come to an end, and, I am telling you, whether 2006, 2007, we going to win the General Elections," Manning said.

Manning added, "For us, the PNM is a true political party, united together in a common cause which is the improvement of the quality of life and the standard of living for all the people of TT."

He advised the councillor-elect that survival in politics meant fulfilling promises made on the campaign trail.

"You will survive in politics if you do not lose sight of your objective — the objective is improving of the people who elected you to serve them.

"And through our collective effort that will cause us to see the PNM as perhaps the most invincible political machine in the Caribbean today," he said.

Manning also praised the blending of the two ethnic races in securing victory in the district saying they were "united not on the basis of the philosophy that politics has its own morality, but united on the basis of morality in public affairs."

Manning added, "United also along a philosophy and a vision when we say Trinidad and Tobago is to be made a developed country by the year 2020, it is going to be a developed country for people of East Indian origin, it is going to be a developed country of African origin, it is going to be a developed country of mixed origin."

Also attending the victory celebration was PNM campaign organiser, Community Development Minister Joan Yuille-Williams, Local Government Minister Rennie Dumas, and La Brea MP Hedwidge Bureaux.