Kali­fa Clyne

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date for the St Joseph by-elec­tion, Ian Al­leyne, took the dra­ma of Crime Watch with him as he cam­paigned in the con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day.Min­utes af­ter Al­leyne and his team ar­rived at Quar­ry Dri­ve, Champs Fleurs, a mem­ber of Al­leyne's group punched a res­i­dent re­peat­ed­ly through a car win­dow af­ter the res­i­dent made a com­ment while dri­ving past the UNC sup­port­ers.This was how a walk­a­bout in the area be­gan as cam­eras rolled.

Al­leyne stood about two me­tres away, wear­ing a long-sleeved shirt, yel­low tie and white-and-gold sun­glass­es.The brief but in­tense al­ter­ca­tion seemed to be eas­i­ly for­got­ten by UNC sup­port­ers, as about a minute af­ter the first punch, the res­i­dent drove away and Al­leyne and his team start­ed speak­ing to oth­er res­i­dents about their is­sues.The res­i­dent was seen at a house lat­er on dur­ing the walk­a­bout, but did not speak to the me­dia.

The UNC walk­a­bout was not the on­ly one plagued with in­ci­dents of phys­i­cal and ver­bal abuse yes­ter­day as the cam­paign for the No­vem­ber 4 by-elec­tion heat­ed up in the wake of Mon­day's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions. In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al par­ty (ILP) can­di­date Om Lal­la's sup­port­ers al­so had to deal with mi­nor in­ci­dents as they crossed paths with op­pos­ing par­ty sup­port­ers dur­ing their walk­a­bout.

Yes­ter­day, Al­leyne was ac­com­pa­nied by En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh.Among com­plaints made to Al­leyne was the fact that res­i­dents on Quar­ry Dri­ve some­times on­ly re­ceived wa­ter once every two weeks, and had to use a gal­vanise-cov­ered well for their dai­ly needs.No mat­ter what is­sue was re­lat­ed to Al­leyne, his re­sponse was the same–he called a mem­ber of his team and promised res­i­dents they would re­ceive help from the next day.

Up­per Quar­ry Dri­ve res­i­dent Michelle Williams cried on Al­leyne's shoul­der as she told him of her needs."I need a hous­ing grant, my house falling apart," Ro­driguez said.Al­leyne re­spond­ed that some­one would con­tact her to­day. When Ro­driguez said she need­ed a food card and for roads to be fixed, he made her the same promise."My son have nine O-lev­els and he doesn't have a job," Ro­driguez said through tears.

Al­leyne's re­sponse was: "Let him come to the of­fice with his CV to­mor­row. I am sure we can find some­thing for him."Those who did not re­ceive promis­es got UNC copy­books, T-shirts, but­tons and mugs.In an in­ter­view dur­ing the walk­a­bout, Al­leyne said he was shocked by what he was hear­ing."I am here to de­liv­er. I am a per­former. We al­ready have projects in Mt Lam­bert, Bangladesh and Aranguez un­der my watch."He said his arrange­ment with the Gov­ern­ment was that he was on­ly con­test­ing the seat if he could de­liv­er.

"So far I have been giv­en all the re­sources so that I can de­liv­er to the peo­ple," he added.On the ILP cam­paign trail in Aranguez, San Juan, while the vast ma­jor­i­ty of res­i­dents wel­comed leader Jack Warn­er and can­di­date Om Lal­la, at least two open­ly dis­played their ob­jec­tion dur­ing a walk­a­bout.Al­most one hour in­to the walk, a man closed his gate as the large group of ILP sup­port­ers ap­proached his home on Mary Street. He was vis­i­bly an­gry.

ILP mem­ber In­shan Ish­mael at­tempt­ed to speak with the man, who start­ed shout­ing: "Go from here. All of you are ban­dits and thieves, go from here! Get out!"The man then dis­played a met­al ob­ject in his hand, caus­ing the mem­bers to move on. Warn­er and Lal­la were quick­ly ad­vised against ap­proach­ing the man as they reached his house.

Min­utes lat­er, there was an­oth­er in­ci­dent in which two uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cers were forced to di­rect traf­fic at an in­ter­sec­tion in the area af­ter a group of ILP sup­port­ers caused a traf­fic jam as they at­tempt­ed to cross the road. An ILP mem­ber who was di­rect­ing traf­fic was or­dered to move by the of­fi­cers. One of­fi­cer with out­stretched hands forced the man to the side of the road. This caused oth­er sup­port­ers to shout "abuse."The ILP mem­ber said to the of­fi­cer: "Why you push me, you did not have to push me?"

The oth­er of­fi­cer who was seat­ed on his mo­tor­cy­cle ad­vised the mem­ber that he was talk­ing to a uni­formed of­fi­cer. But oth­er sup­port­ers again shout­ed "abuse." Mo­ments lat­er, Ish­mael cau­tioned sup­port­ers to de­sist and move on. The walk con­tin­ued as Warn­er and Lal­la reached the ear­li­er group.Min­utes lat­er an­oth­er man wear­ing a yel­low UNC jer­sey stood in the mid­dle of the road and de­mand­ed that ILP mem­bers and sup­port­ers "get out of here."He shout­ed, "We don't want you here, get out of here."

There was no po­lice present for this in­ci­dent. The man re­peat­ed loud­ly: "You know my name? You know my name? They call me "wor­ries."He was cau­tioned by ILP sup­port­ers who were stand­ing around him to be care­ful as he was swing­ing his hands claim­ing that "this is my space."As Warn­er and Lal­la ap­proached, the sup­port­ers moved on with their walk.Lat­er, Warn­er said the in­ci­dents were "democ­ra­cy in ac­tion."

Say­ing that he and Lal­la shook "thou­sands of hands" as they walked the area, Warn­er de­scribed the walk as "ul­tra suc­cess­ful." He said he did not ex­pect such a pos­i­tive re­cep­tion from res­i­dents in the "UNC heart­land" of Aranguez.Com­ment­ing on the ILP's de­feat in the Fe­lic­i­ty dis­trict in Mon­day's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, Warn­er said if af­ter the PP gov­ern­ment gave res­i­dents there 4,000 food cards and 1,000 box drain con­tracts the par­ty on­ly won by 23 votes, the PP has a lot of work to do again.