Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Emo­tions ran high among res­i­dents of the Lopinot/Bon Air West con­stituen­cy on Wednes­day night dur­ing a gen­er­al meet­ing of con­stituents on a vote of no con­fi­dence in its MP, COP deputy leader Lin­coln Dou­glas. They voiced their con­cerns at the Five Rivers Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, some ar­gu­ing Dou­glas was do­ing a good job and just need­ed a chance to prove him­self. Oth­ers re­ject­ed him, say­ing he has done noth­ing in the past two years for con­stituents and the con­stituen­cy. Wen­dell Ever­s­ley, a con­stituent and mem­ber of the COP Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil, was Dou­glas' strongest sup­port­er. He said the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee and some con­stituents were not be­ing fair or hon­est in their judge­ment of Dou­glas. Ever­s­ley said: "Lin­coln Dou­glas is a ju­nior min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. He is not a Cab­i­net min­is­ter, so he is at a great dis­ad­van­tage. "This man has been do­ing work. It might be slow in com­ing but he still gets the job done. These con­stituents know what he is fac­ing. That's why. I say, they are be­ing very un­fair.

"When­ev­er he needs any­thing for his con­stituen­cy he has to beg these big min­is­ters, so his hands are lit­er­al­ly tied by them." Ever­s­ley said he had sat in on many meet­ings with Dou­glas and knew the MP lob­bied for what was need­ed in his con­stituen­cy. Com­mit­tee chair­man Rawle Raphael said the meet­ing was held be­cause nu­mer­ous con­stituents had com­plained about Dou­glas' non-per­for­mance as their MP.

He is­sued a state­ment on March 23, in which he said the no-con­fi­dence vote was passed be­cause of Dou­glas' "ex­treme lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for his con­stituents." Raphael told the T&T Guardian the ex­ec­u­tive was call­ing on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the Fyz­abad Ac­cord, which pro­vid­ed for the re­call of a par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive if he or she did not per­form. He said on five oc­ca­sions con­stituents' com­plaints had been brought to the at­ten­tion of the head ta­ble dur­ing Na­tion­al Coun­cil meet­ings but to date there have been no im­prove­ments. Raphael added: "I was a par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive and I served my con­stituen­cy (Arou­ca North) from 1986-1991 and I want to say MPs have pow­er be­cause they have the back­ing of the peo­ple.

"I was able to get jobs for the res­i­dents, fix what need­ed to be fixed and made sure to be vis­i­ble to my con­stituents. MPs have pow­er to get things done." He said Dou­glas was not tak­ing his of­fice se­ri­ous­ly, oth­er­wise he would be pay­ing at­ten­tion to the cries of the peo­ple in his con­stituen­cy. Fel­low com­mit­tee mem­ber, Trevor Greaves, agreed and said Dou­glas had been em­ploy­ing peo­ple from out­side the con­stituen­cy. "He thinks that we do not know this. He does not know this ex­ec­u­tive team well but af­ter tonight he will know who we are," Greaves added. He said con­stituents must de­mand re­spect from their rep­re­sen­ta­tives, no mat­ter with which par­ty they were af­fil­i­at­ed.

"We must nev­er let them for­get they work for us, not the oth­er way around. They are not the boss­es. They feel they are but they are not, They work for us," said Greaves. He said the com­mit­tee planned to host a se­ries of meet­ings on Dou­glas' per­for­mance over the next few weeks. He said the vote of no con­fi­dence in Dou­glas, which has been put on hold, should be a strong mes­sage to every COP mem­ber and a re­minder to MPs that if they did not serve the peo­ple well they would find them­selves in the same sit­u­a­tion. Lin­coln Dou­glas en­tered Par­lia­ment in 2010 as one of the six COP MPs, suc­ceed­ing for­mer Min­is­ter of In­for­ma­tion Neil Parsan­lal of the PNM.