Nass­er Khan

Where were you born and where did you grow up and what was it like?

I was born in a hum­ble town of Rox­bor­ough lo­cat­ed at the East­ern shores of To­ba­go. My ear­ly so­cial­i­sa­tion took place in this town where I at­tend­ed pri­ma­ry school and was a rou­tine church­go­er as a young boy. In my lat­er years I taught an adult ed­u­ca­tion Math­e­mat­ics class in Rox­bor­ough. I had oth­er odd jobs like sell­ing ice cream and at­tend­ing to my fam­i­ly gar­den un­der­stand­ing that Rox­bor­ough got its name from a for­mer sug­ar es­tate.

Rox­bor­ough was that place that gave me my in­spi­ra­tion of re­silience to per­se­vere. Dur­ing those im­memo­r­i­al times I was able to un­der­stand the strug­gle, I know what it’s like not to have, liv­ing with­out ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties and how to be dis­ci­plined enough to en­dure.

Tell us about your in­spi­ra­tion to do what you do and who and what in­spired you and what keeps you go­ing?

I am in­spired by The Bible. My mantra scrip­ture is Ecc 9:10 that says that what­ev­er your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowl­edge or wis­dom in the grave, to which you are go­ing. I feel a sense of ful­fil­ment, sat­is­fac­tion and grat­i­fi­ca­tion in help­ing oth­ers. This warm glow dri­ves me with a strong sense of pur­pose and re­in­forces my sense of re­lat­ed­ness. I would de­scribe my­self as an em­pa­thet­ic which cre­ates a per­son­al con­scious­ness for both cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al re­spons­es

What goals and am­bi­tions do you have in terms of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fu­ture and how do you plan to achieve them?

My goal is to cre­ate a uni­fied, not a uni­formed Trinidad and To­ba­go in which dif­fer­ences can be em­braced, re­spect­ed and high­light­ed. Cre­at­ing or­gan­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty on which moral­i­ty de­pends. To trans­form our pol­i­tics be­yond race but rather rea­son. The racial di­vide must end be­cause bi-par­ti­san pol­i­tics have bit­ter­ly di­vid­ed us to the ex­tent where we are choked eco­nom­i­cal­ly by the rul­ing class. We need leg­isla­tive re­form and new po­lit­i­cal ideals.

What would you like our read­ers to know about Wat­son Duke in terms of who he is and what he stands for?

I am a deep thinker and strate­gist. I am a firm be­liev­er in God and in­tox­i­cat­ed with the love of good­ness and jus­tice. I live by the gold­en rule to treat oth­ers as you would have them treat you.

What ad­vice would you give to the young peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go?

I must ad­vise all young peo­ple to stand for change. The gen­er­al con­sen­sus of the “youth” is alien­ation from elec­toral pol­i­tics. Most feel pro­found­ly alien­at­ed and ig­nored. Most young peo­ple do not vote. This stark sen­ti­ment is what I must change. It is time to give the young peo­ple a voice. They can be re-en­gaged with pol­i­tics that sees them and gives pre­sen­ta­tion and in­clu­siv­i­ty with­out ageism. It’s no longer enough to ‘just be heard’ by politi­cians, I am ac­tive­ly cre­at­ing al­ter­na­tive spaces for dri­ving this agen­da.

Giv­en your trade union hat and your pub­lic ser­vice al­le­giance (at least the per­cep­tion there­of), what do you say to the pri­vate sec­tor who may be hes­i­tant about sup­port­ing you?

Wat­son Solomon Duke wants the pri­vate sec­tor to have an ex­press line when it comes to the ease of do­ing busi­ness with­in and with­out our coun­try. I be­lieve that the con­di­tions should be cre­at­ed and im­proved to fa­cil­i­tate the steady and sure growth of a ro­bust pri­vate sec­tor. I al­so be­lieve in the pri­vate sec­tor ho­n­our­ing its so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the em­ploy­ees and cit­i­zens of our coun­try. I be­lieve and will work to­wards a WIN-WIN for all of us.

De­scribe your­self in two words one be­gin­ning with W, the oth­er with D, your ini­tials.

I am a hard WORK­ER with big DREAMS for my Trinidad and To­ba­go peo­ple.

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