Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Jear­lean John has lam­bast­ed the Prime Min­is­ter and Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Dr Kei­th Row­ley, for ac­cus­ing her of try­ing to bribe res­i­dents of the area for votes.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, John said she, along with sev­er­al oth­ers, were not “giv­ing away any­thing” but rather bring­ing re­lief to fam­i­lies whose homes were flood­ed dur­ing ad­verse weath­er con­di­tions.

On Tues­day night Dr Row­ley al­leged that the UNC was at­tempt­ing to se­cure votes in Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion by “hand­ing out by the truck­load fridges, stoves, wash­ing ma­chines and mi­crowaves.”

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to John, “You see the Prime Min­is­ter could com­ment on what he saw on so­cial me­dia but, he did not see the cri­sis on so­cial me­dia be­cause La Hor­quet­ta will on­ly mean some­thing to him on the 10th.”

The UNC can­di­date said she was ap­proached by sev­er­al groups will­ing to pro­vide re­lief to the fam­i­lies who suf­fered loss­es dur­ing rain­fall over the week­end.

“Peo­ple’s lives were float­ing away and women cry­ing, men cry­ing be­cause they worked hard for what they have,” John stat­ed.

She added, “All these items were do­nat­ed and Dr Row­ley could get items too if he could use his prime min­is­ter­ship for good but he on­ly use it to bul­ly peo­ple.”

Neisha George is one res­i­dent of La­dy­bird Av­enue whose home was flood­ed.

The moth­er of two told Guardian Me­dia her home was un­der as much as five feet of wa­ter af­ter on­ly half-hour of rain.

She told us she lost her re­frig­er­a­tor, tele­vi­sion and couch set.

George said she was sit­ting to the front of her house when she was ap­proached by the UNC La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro team of­fer­ing to as­sist with clean­ing up her home. She was al­so one of the fam­i­lies to have re­ceived a fridge and stove from John.

Not want­i­ng to com­ment on this par­tic­u­lar in­ci­dent, chair­man of the Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath re­mind­ed par­ties to ad­here to the code of con­duct they all will­ing­ly signed.

“With­in the code of po­lit­i­cal con­duct, there is a state­ment that says that can­di­dates should al­low for free and fair elec­tions and in that con­text, they should not en­gage in giv­ing things or seek to bribe or ma­nip­u­late po­ten­tial vot­ers,” ac­cord­ing to Dr Ra­goonath.

For­mer Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj has since writ­ten to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) call­ing for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Prime Min­is­ter’s bribery claim against the UNC.

Ma­haraj said as a mem­ber of the UNC he was deeply dis­turbed by the al­le­ga­tions. In his let­ter to the EBC Chair­man, Mark Ramk­er­rysingh, Ma­haraj not­ed that Dr Row­ley would not make such a state­ment with­out ev­i­dence.