Ucill Cam­bridge

"If they vote for a clean cam­paign, he will win. If they vote on the is­sues, he will win. If they vote for a can­di­date who did not get down in the gut­ter with racial talk, he will win. If they don't vote trib­al, he will win."

This was the view of Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh when asked about the chances of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Avinash Singh, win­ning to­mor­row's Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion. Deyals­ingh spoke to the Sun­day Guardian dur­ing yes­ter­day's mo­tor­cade through­out Ch­agua­nas. Deyals­ingh, ac­cord­ing to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Forde, gave ma­jor cam­paign sup­port to Singh.

Deyals­ingh al­so com­ment­ed on cam­paign fi­nance for the elec­tions. "None of the par­ties who spent the kind of mon­ey that has been spent in this elec­tion could ever claim to be con­cerned about cam­paign fi­nanc­ing. You have two par­ties spend­ing mul­ti­ple mil­lions in a by-elec­tion. Where is the mon­ey com­ing from? Small con­trib­u­tors or con­tac­tors, that is the fear," he said.

The PNM mo­tor­cade left the PNM Ch­agua­nas con­stituen­cy of­fice just af­ter 2 pm. Be­fore tak­ing to the streets, when asked about how he felt he would do in the elec­tion race, a very pos­i­tive Singh said, "If I thought I would lose, I would not be here to­day."Oth­er mem­bers of the PNM camp were al­so speak­ing of vic­to­ry. Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus main­tained that all her mon­ey was on Singh, de­clar­ing that he was the "dark horse."

Singh hit the road with two pick-up trucks filled with sweet pota­toes which he said he had har­vest­ed from his gar­den ear­li­er in the morn­ing. As the mo­tor­cade moved through Ch­agua­nas, Singh, at in­ter­vals got out of the truck to meet with mem­bers of the con­stituen­cy and hand out some of his sweet pota­toes. But as the Sun­day Guardian spoke with the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Singh's largesse, they said that while they felt he was "a good boy," they would not be giv­ing him their vote.

One group of men along the trail voiced what seemed to be the go­ing sen­ti­ment yes­ter­day, "Warn­er is a work­er."One el­der­ly man, hold­ing his bag of pota­toes said, "I can­not lie, I will not vote for Avinash, I vot­ing for Warn­er, he does help poor peo­ple."It was an un­event­ful ride with no hos­tile oc­cur­rences.

And then there was Kr­ish­na Ramkissoon, one of the PNM mem­bers who was screened to con­test the by-elec­tion but came up short against Singh. At Pre­cious Bar, cor­ner Ca­can­dee Street and Pierre Road, he pulled up, and two men wear­ing T-shirts bear­ing the ILP lo­go came out of his car. Ramkissoon wore noth­ing show­ing his po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion."I don't have to wear any­thing, every­body know I am PNM," he de­clared.One of the men in his green shirt added, "Don't let a T-shirt fool you, it's just a T-shirt."

Present to lend sup­port to Singh were PNM stal­wart Joan Yuille-Williams and Paula Gopee-Scoon, among oth­ers.