KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment by-elec­tions in the Lengua/In­di­an Walk and Quinam/Morne Di­a­blo elec­toral dis­tricts just 12 days away, can­di­dates are step­ping up their cam­paign­ing, hop­ing to in­crease their chances of sit­ting on the Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PTRC) and Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (PDRC), re­spec­tive­ly.

With the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s (UNC) dom­i­nant lead­er­ship of the PDRC since its in­cep­tion, the par­ty’s can­di­date for the Quinam/Morne Di­a­blo seat, Sarah Sookdeo, be­lieves his­to­ry will work in her favour.

How­ev­er, Sookdeo, a health, safe­ty, and en­vi­ron­ment ad­vis­er, is not de­pend­ing on his­to­ry as she tries to reach the length and breadth of the dis­trict. De­scrib­ing her com­mu­ni­ty walks as en­er­getic, she re­vealed many com­plaints about a lack of wa­ter sup­ply, in­fra­struc­ture, clogged drains, ram­pant rob­beries, and so­cial is­sues.

She said the PDRC tries to de­liv­er as much truck-borne wa­ter to the burgess­es dai­ly with lim­it­ed re­sources. “It re­al­ly has been a try­ing time for cit­i­zens on this end,” Sookdeo added. If suc­cess­ful on the Ju­ly 17 polling day, Sookdeo must fill the big boots left be­hind by for­mer coun­cil­lor and PDRC chair­man Diptee Ram­nath, who died last De­cem­ber. Sookdeo pre­vi­ous­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the UNC’s screen­ing for that dis­trict, but Ram­nath got the par­ty’s nod. She is con­fi­dent of fill­ing the void left by Ram­nath. “I have full con­fi­dence that I can make a dif­fer­ence be­cause I am will­ing to li­aise with WASA and see how best they can im­prove this sit­u­a­tion be­cause every­body is pay­ing bills on this end, so I think it is their right to be sup­plied with wa­ter on a bi­week­ly ba­sis.”

Mean­while, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for the Lengua/In­di­an Walk by-elec­tion, Pas­tor Aut­ly Granthume, said his cam­paign en­tails con­vinc­ing dis­grun­tled peo­ple to give him a chance af­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous par­ties failed to de­liv­er on promis­es. Granthume be­lieves run­ning a clean cam­paign with­out mak­ing blind promis­es will be the dif­fer­ence be­tween win­ning and los­ing.

He said that just as UNC can­di­date Nicole Gopaul is con­fi­dent, he feels even more sure he will win. Granthume said he and his team are putting in more work than they did dur­ing the pre­vi­ous elec­tion cam­paign, which re­sult­ed in a tie be­tween him and Gopaul fol­low­ing an Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion re­count.

He said his team was in the dis­trict every day this week, as they have not stopped walk­ing since the last elec­tion. He said their goal was to con­sis­tent­ly iden­ti­fy peo­ple’s needs and of­fer so­lu­tions. A lack of wa­ter sup­ply and poor road con­di­tions cov­er most of the is­sues elec­tors face.

Ac­cord­ing to Granthume, many of those he spoke to be­lieved that he would de­liv­er goods and ser­vices to them once they al­lowed him to rep­re­sent them.

“I try to get them to un­der­stand that each day is a new be­gin­ning. Maybe some have failed them in the past. I am not say­ing that I am per­fect and that I may not fail in some way, but I help them to un­der­stand that each per­son de­serves a chance and is giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty. The Lord be­ing my help with the con­tin­u­ous sup­port of oth­er per­son­nel, I am go­ing to be there, and I am go­ing to do my best,” Granthume said.

Mean­while, in­de­pen­dent can­di­date Pe­ter­son Morales promis­es con­stant avail­abil­i­ty to his burgess and a phone num­ber that will not change af­ter elec­tion day.

In his cam­paign poster, Morales said it is im­pos­si­ble to meet every­one on the trail, es­pe­cial­ly as the elec­toral dis­trict has 8,500 peo­ple.

Among his plans is a house-to-house cam­paign to as­cer­tain peo­ple’s needs and meet­ings with all heads of schools and in­sti­tu­tions su­per­vis­ing chil­dren. Morales al­so plans to meet with all busi­ness own­ers and em­ploy­able peo­ple in the dis­trict to fos­ter part­ner­ships. Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to reach oth­er can­di­dates in the by-elec­tions. PNM An­der­son Nanan was in a meet­ing while Gopaul re­quest­ed writ­ten ques­tions. Both did not re­spond by press time.