Shas­tri Boodan

With just a week left be­fore vot­ers head to the polls, two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­dates are ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of us­ing “des­per­ate tac­tics” to dis­tract from what they called its record on crime, in­fra­struc­ture, and pub­lic sec­tor ne­glect.

UNC Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader and Ca­roni Cen­tral can­di­date David Lee said re­cent gov­ern­ment an­nounce­ments such as salary in­creas­es for nurs­es and teach­ers were lit­tle more than “elec­tion gim­micks.”

“At the 99 hour, just eleven days be­fore the elec­tion, this is an­oth­er elec­tion gim­mick,” Lee told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a walk­a­bout at Cal­cut­ta Road #1 over the week­end. He ar­gued that if Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young gen­uine­ly val­ued health­care and ed­u­ca­tion work­ers, those in­creas­es would have come years ago, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the height of the COVID‑19 pan­dem­ic.

Lee al­so point­ed to the clo­sure of the El Do­ra­do nurs­ing acad­e­my as a sign of what he called mis­placed pri­or­i­ties. “If you were tru­ly em­pa­thet­ic to the de­vel­op­ment of nurs­es, you wouldn’t have shut down that fa­cil­i­ty,” he said.

He fur­ther claimed that the Prime Min­is­ter had been echo­ing UNC pro­pos­als through­out the cam­paign. “He is copy­ing every pol­i­cy the UNC talks about on the hus­tings,” Lee said.

Se­cu­ri­ty and in­fra­struc­ture were al­so top is­sues for the Ca­roni Cen­tral can­di­date. Lee cit­ed a re­cent fa­tal shoot­ing out­side the air­port short­ly af­ter the state of emer­gency was lift­ed as proof that crime re­mains unchecked. He al­so said Ca­roni Cen­tral res­i­dents are re­ceiv­ing piped wa­ter just two days a month. “Un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, these com­mu­ni­ties did not face this lev­el of hard­ship,” he added.

Cou­va South can­di­date Bar­ry Padarath struck a sim­i­lar tone dur­ing a walk­a­bout on Cal­cut­ta Road #2, ac­cus­ing the PNM of fail­ing to tack­le vi­o­lent crime.

He ref­er­enced the fa­tal shoot­ing of 33-year-old fish­er­man Arkim Quashie at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port last Thurs­day, less than an hour af­ter Quashie re­turned from Pana­ma. “The air­port is sup­posed to be the most se­cure fa­cil­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Padarath said. “It’s mind-bog­gling that some­thing like that could hap­pen.”

He said the in­ci­dent ex­posed a broad­er pat­tern of gov­ern­ment in­ac­tion, ar­gu­ing that T&T had fall­en be­hind in­ter­na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards put in place af­ter the 9/11 at­tacks. “Sta­tis­tics show that when the PNM is in pow­er, crime goes up,” he said.

Padarath crit­i­cised Young’s plan to un­veil a na­tion­al crime plan just days be­fore the elec­tion. “You’ve had 10 years. You were even the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. What stopped you from im­ple­ment­ing this plan years ago?”

Call­ing the cur­rent crime sit­u­a­tion un­ten­able, Padarath said vot­ers want prac­ti­cal de­tails: “They want to know how many more po­lice of­fi­cers will be de­ployed, how many po­lice sta­tions will be open 24/7, what re­sources will be giv­en to the TTPS—up­dat­ed bul­let­proof vests, prop­er equip­ment, and mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy not just for de­tec­tion, but for pros­e­cu­tion.”

He al­so called for ur­gent re­form of the coun­try’s firearm li­cens­ing sys­tem, which he de­scribed as “ar­cha­ic.”

“It’s 10 years too late,” Padarath said. “What you didn’t do in 10 years, you’re not go­ing to fix in 10 days. The coun­try is wait­ing to ex­hale.”