PLM banking on hung parliament, says commentator

Social commentator Pastor Claude O. Skelton-Cline has outlined what he believes is the electoral strategy of the People's Progressive Movement: engineering a hung parliament that would allow the party to negotiate its way into a coalition government.

During his radio programme Honestly Speaking on Tuesday, October 20, Skelton-Cline said PLM leader Mark Vanterpool, a former legislator, is counting on winning his own District 4 race and then recruiting National Democratic Party members to join him once they secure their own seats.

"What he's hoping for, at best, is that on the night of the election, no party can get to seven [elected members] if the House remains [at] thirteen, or eight if it expands to fifteen," Skelton-Cline told his audience. Should that occur, he explained, Vanterpool would then work to assemble enough individuals to establish a government.

Skelton-Cline contended that the PLM possesses no grassroots political foundation across the territory and characterised it as an offshoot of the NDP. He said the party's only viable route to power lies in building coalitions after votes are counted, not through winning seats in its own right.

"That's another way to skin a cat," he said, employing the phrase to describe this unconventional path to office.

To date, the PLM has put forward three candidates: Vanterpool in District 4, Clifton Forbes in the Third District, and Juan R. Hatchett as a Territorial At-Large candidate.