Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

More than a year af­ter it broke ranks with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) has start­ed putting its elec­tion ma­chin­ery in place to fight lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions alone.Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the MSJ's St Joseph Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, of­fice yes­ter­day, par­ty leader David Ab­du­lah said the MSJ has be­gun to so­lic­it funds and screen po­ten­tial can­di­dates.

How­ev­er, he said can­di­dates would not be cho­sen on the ba­sis of their po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance to the MSJ, but on their track record in strug­gling for so­cial jus­tice."We haven't an­nounced the num­ber of seats...We are in the process of get­ting per­sons to be nom­i­nat­ed," Ab­du­lah said."We have a care­ful strat­e­gy of con­test which would see us con­test­ing in those com­mu­ni­ties where we have been en­gag­ing in work with the peo­ple of those com­mu­ni­ties."

He added that the MSJ was not go­ing to "para­chute peo­ple to con­test elec­tions just for the sake of con­test­ing.""There is go­ing to be a process of en­gage­ment with per­sons in the com­mu­ni­ties who have been do­ing work over a pe­ri­od of time," Ab­du­lah said.He said the MSJ would se­lect can­di­dates from vil­lage coun­cils, com­mu­ni­ty coun­cils, youth groups, trade unions, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, cul­tur­al groups, sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and so­cial work­ers who have up­lift­ed the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens.

Ab­du­lah al­so agreed with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan that the qual­i­ty of lo­cal gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery was suf­fer­ing be­cause the best peo­ple were of­ten not se­lect­ed be­cause of par­ti­san pol­i­tics.He added that the MSJ's draft man­i­festo for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple who con­test lo­cal elec­tions should not be nom­i­nat­ed by po­lit­i­cal par­ties, but by the com­mu­ni­ty.He said the MSJ would present its po­si­tion on lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form by the mid­dle of this month.