Shamfa elected PNM Tobago Council political leader

STEPHON NICHOLAS

GML To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

For­mer To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis is the new po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil.

It took al­most eight hours in a painstak­ing vote-count­ing ex­er­cise be­fore the for­mer sports min­is­ter was de­clared the win­ner just af­ter 2 am this morn­ing.

Cud­joe-Lewis, who con­test­ed as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, was vy­ing against for­mer mi­nor­i­ty leader and head of the Team Uni­ty slate, Kelvon Mor­ris.

There was an­oth­er vic­to­ry for the in­de­pen­dents on the night as Nicole Hen­ry won the po­si­tion of chair­man over Team Uni­ty’s Charles Smith and fel­low in­de­pen­dent Ryan Joe­field.

At the par­ty head­quar­ters this morn­ing, a smil­ing Cud­joe-Lewis was con­grat­u­lat­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 sup­port­ers.

It was a sim­i­lar­ly low-key af­fair to nom­i­na­tion day when Cud­joe-Lewis ar­rived by her­self to file her pa­pers, while her op­po­nent had dancers and a large group of sup­port­ers.

How­ev­er, on that day she re­mind­ed the pub­lic, “My peo­ple is Kelvon peo­ple, Kelvon peo­ple is my peo­ple.”

Cud­joe-Lewis was joined in the cel­e­bra­tions by her cam­paign man­ag­er, Garth Ben­jamin, whom she de­scribed as a qui­et storm.

She said she was very grate­ful for her cam­paign team, which she de­scribed as small but very im­pact­ful.

“It has been the most fun cam­paign and just lis­ten­ing to what the grass­roots had to say,” she said.

She said her bud­get-friend­ly ap­proach was de­lib­er­ate, as there was not much fund­ing for any fan­fare.

“All these folks, for the most part, are vol­un­teers, young peo­ple who just wan­na see change in the PNM.”

On the large turnout of vot­ers yes­ter­day, which saw bal­lot pa­pers run out twice at one polling sta­tion, Cud­joe-Lewis said the mo­men­tum has start­ed.

“A la­dy called me from To­ba­go East say­ing, ‘I had put away my par­ty card but I gonna find it. I have it in some box­es down­stairs.’”

She said she feels in­spired and in­tends to start a mem­ber­ship dri­ve to build on the buoy­ant mood among mem­bers.

“We have to make sure our par­ty mem­bers know what par­ty groups they are in and get those func­tion­ing again. Par­ty groups serve as a lit­tle hub, but more so a lit­tle fam­i­ly in the com­mu­ni­ty.”

She said all mem­bers have a vi­tal role to play in the re­build­ing of the par­ty af­ter its de­feat in the last To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly elec­tions.

Bal­lot count­ing con­tin­ues at 10 am to­day as 15 oth­er po­si­tions on the ex­ec­u­tive are still to be filled.