Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

De­spite chang­ing his al­le­giance to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Mar­cus Gird­harie is con­fi­dent that he will get suf­fi­cient sup­port from res­i­dents of Mara­bel­la South/Vista­bel­la to wres­tle the seat from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

 Gird­harie, who served as the UNC coun­cil­lor for the seat in the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion for three years, of­fi­cial­ly filed his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers un­der a PNM tick­et at the Mara­bel­la South Sec­ondary School yes­ter­day.

 But his op­po­nent, UNC can­di­date Sasha Ali, a new­com­er in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, be­lieves she will be vic­to­ri­ous at the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions on Au­gust 14.

Ac­com­pa­nied by UNC Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Ali told re­porters, “I am in it to win it, so my chances are great. I am here to serve the peo­ple and, for those who know me, know I al­ways give my best foot for­ward and Trinidad and To­ba­go needs a chance. We need a se­cure Trinidad and To­ba­go so I am here to help work to­wards that, se­cur­ing neigh­bour­hoods, se­cur­ing streets, se­cur­ing cit­i­zens. I am here and I will work.”

Ali, who comes from a hu­man re­source, in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions back­ground, did not think that Gird­harie’s switch to the PNM would af­fect her chances to win. “No, I am fo­cus­ing on my suc­cess and ad­vo­cat­ing for peo­ple with­in my com­mu­ni­ty so I know I am go­ing to do a good job,” she said.

 Con­fi­dent in re­claim­ing the seat, Gird­harie told re­porters res­i­dents have sup­port­ed his de­ci­sion to cross the floor. “The dis­trict is one that is di­verse, we do have in­di­vid­u­als that will vote on par­ty in the dis­trict, ob­vi­ous­ly I would have won in the past with some places be­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and some places los­ing at that point in time to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. How­ev­er, dur­ing my term of of­fice, the serv­ing was across the board.

“It was not for the per­sons who would have been UNC. I would have served the en­tire dis­trict and for that rea­son, per­sons have seen the val­ue of the work I do as a coun­cil­lor and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for them. So that we do not an­tic­i­pate that the move to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment would be one that is seen as a neg­a­tive.”

De­spite the lengthy pro­cess­ing of fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, she said the UNC can­di­dates had no is­sues with their doc­u­ments, but it took the EBC of­fi­cials a long time to vet them.

She did not think that UNC’s chances of win­ning were af­fect­ed by some of its mem­bers join­ing the PNM.  

“No, I don’t think so be­cause again I think we have a lot of com­mit­ted peo­ple. We have new peo­ple, young peo­ple step­ping for­ward which says a lot about what we have to of­fer and I think those things are just, we are not get­ting dis­tract­ed with those things as I said we are fo­cused on our poli­cies. We are fo­cused on the plans we have put for­ward,” she said.