Sascha Wil­son

Long-stand­ing PNM mem­ber Phillip Ra­goo­nanan has shift­ed al­le­giance to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and is work­ing to­wards hand­ing over the tra­di­tion­al­ly PNM-con­trolled Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion to the rul­ing par­ty on Ju­ly 26. The for­mer cam­paign man­ag­er for Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon had ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion one day af­ter the PNM de­feat in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. Ra­goo­nanan said he was con­fi­dent the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would win the Point Fortin elec­toral seats in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing the PNM had nev­er lost a seat in Point Fortin, Ra­goo­nanan said he did not be­lieve the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had a dif­fi­cult task be­fore them. He said: "I feel right now the en­tire Point Fortin is dis­en­chant­ed with how they were treat­ed un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. I think there is a mas­sive un­der­ground swing to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship. I am con­fi­dent that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship can win. "I feel now is the time for the peo­ple of Point Fortin to re­alise we have to open our eyes and see what is best for Point Fortin. We have been giv­en a raw deal. Let's try some­thing else for the de­vel­op­ment of Point Fortin."

Asked why he re­signed from the PNM af­ter 24 years of ser­vice, Ra­goo­nanan said he felt dis­en­chant­ed about what had tak­en place in the par­ty dur­ing the elec­tion. He added: "I have done the ho­n­ourable thing. I won the seat for Paula Gopee-Scoon. I achieved my ob­jec­tive. "Now you are even see­ing the hi­er­ar­chy in PNM re­sign­ing. Ba­si­cal­ly I am putting the wel­fare of Point Fortin against my per­son­al in­ter­ests." "It is ridicu­lous to see the state of af­fairs in Point Fortin. Whichev­er ve­hi­cle that will make im­prove­ments in Point Fortin I am on board with that." he said. He does not be­lieve the PNM can do any­thing for Point Fortin in the next five years.