Khara Per­sad

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) has re-brand­ed its po­lit­i­cal par­ty in or­der to fa­cil­i­tate quick­er and eas­i­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and recog­ni­tion on the bal­lot, as the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion ap­proach­es next month.At an of­fi­cial launch on Sun­day at MSJ head­quar­ters on Cir­cu­lar Road, San Fer­nan­do, the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah in­tro­duced a new par­ty lo­go, a so­ca-in­spired MSJ jin­gle, and 14 can­di­dates who will run in the Oc­to­ber 21 elec­tions for po­si­tions as coun­cilors.

The at­mos­phere was spir­it­ed at the out­door func­tion, as there was a live per­for­mance of the new MSJ jin­gle en­ti­tled Mov­ing with MSJ which in­cit­ed danc­ing among the mem­bers who sport­ed light blue shirts, the par­ty's of­fi­cial colour. The mem­bers were so moved, the song was per­formed two times more. Ab­du­lah sang and danced with the group in front of his seat­ed sup­port­ers.

Speak­ing af­ter­wards, Ab­du­lah said the can­di­dates will even­tu­al­ly take of­fice and em­pow­er their com­mu­ni­ties. He said they were not seek­ing of­fice to fill their pock­ets, but to be agents of change.He said the peo­ple cho­sen to rep­re­sent the MSJ were al­ready com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivists in their own right, as op­posed to oth­er par­ties that were "scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel" and even go­ing "in­to the gut­ter" to get can­di­dates.

"The phi­los­o­phy of those oth­er par­ties is that they could put up a cra­paud, and ex­pect peo­ple to vote for the cra­paud, on the ba­sis of race or re­li­gion, or a green jer­sey and some hun­dred dol­lars in the jer­sey."He said the MSJ had no jer­seys or mon­ey to dis­trib­ute to com­mu­ni­ties.He said dur­ing his walk­a­bouts, the feed­back was that peo­ple were fed up of in­ef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion.He said re­gard­less of the out­come of the elec­tion, the MSJ's move in­to lo­cal elec­tion was the be­gin­ning of a "vir­tu­al rev­o­lu­tion in T&T."

Ab­du­lah ac­cused the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) of not sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion that would reg­u­late pub­lic pro­cure­ment."UNC does not want leg­is­la­tion that would reg­u­late how con­tracts are award­ed be­cause they want to be able to give out con­tracts to friends and fam­i­ly and so on.""None of the par­ties want pub­lic pro­cure­ment, none of them."

He said with prop­er leg­is­la­tion, Cab­i­net's de­ci­sion to wreck a fire truck at a cost of $6.8 mil­lion would not have been ap­proved.Ab­du­lah was re­fer­ring to the cost­ly re­trieval that was ap­proved by Cab­i­net for a fire truck that ran off the road in No­vem­ber 2012 at Blan­chisseuse Road, Ari­ma.He said none of the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties want­ed par­ty fi­nance re­form ei­ther.