Patriotic Front says it didn’t split votes in 2025 election

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) has again re­ject­ed claims that it was part of any covert po­lit­i­cal arrange­ment dur­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, in­sist­ing it nei­ther aligned with any par­ty nor en­tered the race to de­lib­er­ate­ly split votes.

In a state­ment mark­ing one year since the par­ty’s elec­toral de­but, po­lit­i­cal leader Mick­ela Pan­day said the or­gan­i­sa­tion was in­de­pen­dent­ly fund­ed and dri­ven sole­ly by sup­port­ers who be­lieved in of­fer­ing an al­ter­na­tive to the tra­di­tion­al two-par­ty sys­tem.

“Let me say this clear­ly once again,” Pan­day said. “The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front fund­ed it­self, sup­port­ed by cit­i­zens who be­lieved in our mes­sage and in our mis­sion.”

She added that the par­ty’s fi­nances were trans­par­ent and open to scruti­ny, dis­miss­ing what she de­scribed as “lies” and “false claims” about its fund­ing and al­leged al­liances.

Crit­ics and po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, par­tic­u­lar­ly from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), ar­gued that the PF was a spoil­er par­ty. The claim was that the PNM fund­ed the PF to con­test seats in UNC strong­holds to split the op­po­si­tion vote, there­by eas­ing the PNM’s path to vic­to­ry.

On April 14, 2025, then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told her sup­port­ers, ““Every vote for a third par­ty is a vote for the PNM. They are de­coys sent to con­fuse you and split the base so the PNM can slide back in­to pow­er through the back door.”

The PF con­test­ed its first gen­er­al elec­tion in 2025 with­out what Pan­day de­scribed as the “fi­nan­cial ma­chin­ery, re­sources, or deeply en­trenched struc­tures” of the coun­try’s two dom­i­nant po­lit­i­cal par­ties. De­spite those lim­i­ta­tions, she said the par­ty se­cured the third-high­est num­ber of votes na­tion­al­ly, a re­sult she framed as a sig­nif­i­cant sig­nal from the elec­torate.

The PF re­ceived 21,218 votes af­ter con­test­ing 37 of the 41 con­stituen­cies. This rep­re­sent­ed 3.42% of the valid votes cast.

In the Arou­ca/Mal­oney con­stituen­cy, the PF re­ceived 537 votes in a seat that the PNM’s Mar­vin Gon­za­les won by get­ting 259 more votes than the UNC’s Dr Na­tal­ie Chai­tan-Ma­haraj. Mean­while, in Mal­abar/Mau­si­ca, the PF re­ceived 834 votes. In that con­stituen­cy, the PNM’s Do­minic Ro­main won by a mar­gin of 254 votes over the UNC’s Do­minic Smith.

Pan­day main­tained that the par­ty’s pres­ence on the bal­lot was root­ed in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples rather than strate­gic in­ter­fer­ence in the elec­toral out­come.

“We were not cre­at­ed to serve any­one’s agen­da, and we were not in the elec­tion to split votes,” she said. “We were there be­cause democ­ra­cy be­longs to the peo­ple, not two par­ties alone.”

Pan­day ar­gued that a healthy democ­ra­cy de­pends on the emer­gence of new po­lit­i­cal voic­es and warned against what she sug­gest­ed was a cul­ture that pres­sures vot­ers in­to choos­ing be­tween es­tab­lished par­ties.

“In a true democ­ra­cy, cit­i­zens must nev­er be made to feel trapped, si­lenced, or forced to choose be­tween the same old op­tions,” she said.

The PF leader al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to sup­port­ers, vol­un­teers and can­di­dates who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the par­ty’s cam­paign, many of whom, she said, faced crit­i­cism and pres­sure while pro­mot­ing the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front’s plat­form.

Pan­day said the par­ty re­mains com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing its pres­ence and con­tin­u­ing its ad­vo­ca­cy for po­lit­i­cal al­ter­na­tives in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“One year lat­er, we are still here, still stand­ing, still fo­cused, still in­de­pen­dent,” she said. “The jour­ney has on­ly just be­gun.”