- Gerrymandering Accusations: MP Colm Imbert has strongly criticised the Municipal Corporation Bill Amendments 2026, accusing the government of manipulating boundaries to favour the UNC in upcoming local elections.
- New Boroughs Questioned: Imbert challenged the creation of the Barataria, St Augustine, and Couva boroughs, stating they lack logistical sense and questioning how they will be funded when existing corporations are already struggling.
- Floor-Crossing Hypocrisy: The Opposition MP called out the government’s move to bar councillors from crossing the floor, highlighting their past support for the practice when it benefited them.
By Alicia Chamely
The Municipal Corporation Bill Amendments 2026 is devoid of ethics and actual local government reform, says Member of Parliament for Diego Martin North/East Colm Imbert, as he accuses the government of amending the Bill to suit the United National Congress in what he calls a “classic example of gerrymandering.”
Imbert, speaking at an Opposition press conference on Tuesday at the Office of the Opposition Leader, accused the government of using the Bill to suit its agenda and skew elections.
Criticising amendments in the Bill that bar members from crossing the floor, as was the case for former UNC now People’s National Movement (PNM) councillor Victor Roberts, Imbert said, “There’s no ethics or integrity in anything that they do. This bill is unethical.”
He noted that in 1995, when two PNM MPs crossed the floor, securing a win for the UNC, crossing the floor was “the correct and proper right thing to do. But now it is wrong for UNC councillors to get fed up with the UNC and go over to the PNM.”
Addressing the creation of three new boroughs (the Borough of Barataria, the Borough of St Augustine, and the Borough of Couva), Imbert said there was no “logic,” as to why these areas deserved the status of borough, other than they contained “pockets of UNC voters.”
Imbert said, “So what they have done is simply create three new corporations based on the locality of UNC votes. That’s all. There’s no reform in that. There’s no sense in that. There’s no logic in that. How does that help the country to run better with these three new corporations?”
Discussing the Bill, which extends constituencies and polling divisions, he said, “What they’ve also done, which we expected, is that they’ve looked at PNM corporations and they’ve added polling divisions onto PNM corporations by and large, where the UNC is dominant.”
“So in San Fernando, for example, they’ve extended it into what used to be the old Point-a-Pierre and is now the Claxton Bay constituency, a UNC constituency. So, they take a set of UNC polling divisions of Point-a-Pierre/Claxton Bay, and they pull it into the city of San Fernando in order to weaken the PNM’s votes in that area. They’ve done the same thing in Arima,” he explained.
Accusing the government of using the Bill to benefit them in the upcoming local elections, Imbert said, “So there’s absolutely no logic in any of this. All they have done is use a mathematical model to import UNC polling divisions into PNM corporations by and large, create imaginary boroughs where you have clusters of UNC in an effort to pretend that they are going to win the next local government election.”
Imbert further took issue with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s assertion that the Bill sought to improve the efficiency of local government, questioning how these additional boroughs were going to be funded.
He said, “How are you funding 17 corporations instead of 14? When, already under this administration, all the corporations can do is pay salaries and wages. They have no money for the development programme. They have no money for infrastructure. They have no money for equipment. They have no money for goods and services. So, they can’t function. They have no money for garbage collection.”
Imbert said, “So, I just want to say this is not reform. This is just UNC is at it again. They’re at it again. This is classic gerrymandering. Classic. They have decided because the constitution states that the EBC has to determine the boundaries of individual polling divisions, the boundaries of individual electoral districts within a big region, that they decide they will fix that. They will just move the external boundaries.”
He further criticised the government for not holding any consultations and not being able to reveal any of the logistical issues of adding three new boroughs.
The Municipal Corporation Bill Amendments 2026 was set to be laid in the Lower House on Wednesday.
