Reporter
rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt
Caroni Central MP Arnold Ram has defended his response to an irate member of the public who confronted him in Edinburgh 500 yesterday.
Shortly Ram was interviewed by Guardian Media about an irregularity he observed at the Village Plaza polling station, the woman approached him and told him to get out of the community as she believed he has not done anything to help residents. The incident was captured on camera and later widely circulated on social media.
“I’m not a person to go into a shouting match with anybody so that’s why, you know, I basically left that there, as is. You can’t have a conversation with somebody who is shouting,” Ram said. “If she wants me to listen, if she wants to have a conversation, we can. I would listen to her.”
The woman who was identified by Ram as former UNC Alderman Catherine Joefield, told him: “You don’t do nothing in the community. What you doing here today?”
“I not taking alyuh politics here today you know. None of alyuh. I said you is the MP, you don’t come here. What you doing here today? You knows nothing about inside here.”
Ram, who attempted to distance himself physically from the confrontation, said: “ I don’t have no time with you ma’am, have a good day.”
Joefield was praised by some on social media for standing up to a politician.
“He said it himself. He don’t have no time with all ‘yuh,” Richard Daniel said in a comment posted on CNC3’s Facebook page.
Just before the confrontation, Ram complained to reporters about how close one mock polling station was to the actual polling station.
“We have no beef with respect to a free election process. We are all for a free and fair elections and we are just here to hope that the police officers, the presiding officers, the EBC do their duties,” he said.
Contacted for comment, returning officer Theodora Phillip said they received the report and would act on it. Other than that confrontation, the voting process in Chaguanas was smooth by all accounts.
