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Nikoli Ed­wards, leader of the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty, an­nounced that he and his par­ty will not con­test the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, cit­ing fi­nan­cial con­straints and sys­temic chal­lenges with­in the elec­toral process.

“De­spite re­peat­ed calls for the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty and me to con­test the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the un­for­tu­nate re­al­i­ty is that this is not pos­si­ble at this time,” he wrote in a so­cial me­dia state­ment.

Ed­wards launched the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty in 2019 with the aim of pro­vid­ing an al­ter­na­tive to the dom­i­nant two-par­ty sys­tem. He de­scribed the par­ty’s mis­sion as an ef­fort to in­tro­duce “fresh, youth­ful per­spec­tives in­to the na­tion­al dis­course.” In the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion, the par­ty field­ed a sin­gle can­di­date in San Fer­nan­do West but was un­suc­cess­ful.