- News>
- World
Trinidad president must choose new leader to end deadlock
The Prime Minister and Opposition leader scrapped plans to form a coalition government to end an elections tie, saying they`ll leave it up to the president to decide who should lead the oil-rich Caribbean nation.
The Prime Minister and Opposition leader scrapped plans to form a coalition
government to end an elections tie, saying they'll leave it up to the president to decide who should lead the oil-rich Caribbean nation.
President Arthur Robinson, a longtime rival of incumbent Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, has not announced when he will make a decision, spokesman Arnold Corneal said. Robinson, whose post is mostly ceremonial, was expected to wait for recounts in two districts to be completed early next week. “I am not aware of coalition governments working anywhere,” said Patrick Manning, head of the opposition People's National Movement and a former prime minister. “We have our own experience of 1986 and 1995 when coalition governments did not work.”
Manning's party and Panday's United National Congress each won 18 seats in 36-seat Parliament in December 10 elections. The elections sharpened tensions between descendants of African slaves and descendants of East Indian indentured laborers, who almost evenly split the country's population of 1.3 million. PNM is supported mainly by Afro-Trinidadians, and Panday's is backed mostly by people of East Indian descent.
Panday became Trinidad and Tobago's first East Indian leader when he won his first term in 1995. Panday and manning announced in separate news conferences on Saturday they had reached an agreement that would grant a mandate to govern to the party Robinson chooses, even though it won't have a majority in Parliament.
Bureau Report
President Arthur Robinson, a longtime rival of incumbent Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, has not announced when he will make a decision, spokesman Arnold Corneal said. Robinson, whose post is mostly ceremonial, was expected to wait for recounts in two districts to be completed early next week. “I am not aware of coalition governments working anywhere,” said Patrick Manning, head of the opposition People's National Movement and a former prime minister. “We have our own experience of 1986 and 1995 when coalition governments did not work.”
Manning's party and Panday's United National Congress each won 18 seats in 36-seat Parliament in December 10 elections. The elections sharpened tensions between descendants of African slaves and descendants of East Indian indentured laborers, who almost evenly split the country's population of 1.3 million. PNM is supported mainly by Afro-Trinidadians, and Panday's is backed mostly by people of East Indian descent.
Panday became Trinidad and Tobago's first East Indian leader when he won his first term in 1995. Panday and manning announced in separate news conferences on Saturday they had reached an agreement that would grant a mandate to govern to the party Robinson chooses, even though it won't have a majority in Parliament.
Bureau Report