Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Laven­tille East/ Mor­vant res­i­dents say they are hope­ful that Chris­t­ian Birch­wood, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) can­di­date for the con­stituen­cy in the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions, can con­tin­ue to build on the lega­cy of his pre­de­ces­sors.

Birch­wood was se­lect­ed over four oth­er can­di­dates, in­clud­ing coun­cil­lor Ju­nior St Hillaire, teacher Tracey East­man, Je­re­my In­niss and busi­ness­man David Simp­son, by the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee at Bal­isi­er House on Thurs­day. He re­places Adri­an Leonce, who has served as MP since 2015 but will not seek re-elec­tion due to per­son­al is­sues.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Rob­les Street, Mor­vant, on Sat­ur­day, res­i­dent Cathy-Ann Craig said she had nev­er heard of Birch­wood be­fore but was aware that his pre­de­ces­sor, the out­go­ing Leonce, would no longer be pre­sent­ing him­self for re-elec­tion. De­spite not know­ing Birch­wood, she hopes to meet him to get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of his vi­sion for the con­stituen­cy.

“I’ve nev­er heard his name be­fore to be hon­est, but even be­fore be­ing an MP, there are peo­ple who have done a lot of work in or­gan­is­ing com­mu­ni­ties and so on,” Craig said.

“We have a lot of is­sues in get­ting a con­sis­tent sup­ply of wa­ter and so on, the roads aren’t as bad here as oth­er parts of the com­mu­ni­ty but we need to know he un­der­stands the needs of the peo­ple.”

Craig said she was on­ly con­cerned about whether Birch­wood will re­ceive ad­e­quate “guid­ance and ad­vice” from com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Leonce, as this is a new ex­pe­ri­ence for him.

“It’s not just about walk­ing up and down and giv­ing out ham­pers, peo­ple have high ex­pec­ta­tions,” she said.

At La­dy Young Road, a busi­ness­man who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Fe­lix said he nev­er met Birch­wood per­son­al­ly but knew of peo­ple in the area, par­tic­u­lar­ly Co­conut Dri­ve, who were fa­mil­iar with him and his fam­i­ly. De­spite this, he said he was op­ti­mistic Birch­wood’s youth­ful­ness would make up for his in­ex­pe­ri­ence and said the com­mu­ni­ty was ready to sup­port him.

“For him to get the en­dorse­ment of Adri­an (Leonce) means he’s some­one who is de­serv­ing of the spot. I trust that judge­ment, so I have no prob­lem sup­port­ing him,” Fe­lix said.

How­ev­er, an­oth­er man who asked not to be iden­ti­fied said he did not have very high ex­pec­ta­tions for Birch­wood, as he felt that most of Mor­vant has been ne­glect­ed.

“I don’t want to be neg­a­tive, but there isn’t much an MP by him­self can do. They will pave a few roads here and there but to be re­al, there isn’t much else to look for­ward to and that’s just my opin­ion.”

On Al­mond Dri­ve, Mor­vant, one woman who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Jen­nifer said she knew of Birch­wood’s fam­i­ly but was un­sure of how he would man­age giv­en his new port­fo­lio.

Re­fer­ring to his ed­u­ca­tion and back­ground as an en­gi­neer, she hoped that he would in­spire lo­cal youths to take their ed­u­ca­tion se­ri­ous­ly.

“He’s break­ing a stereo­type by Mor­vant just by be­ing there (as a can­di­date), so I’m hap­py for him,” Jen­nifer said.

“But more than that, we want to meet him and hear from him be­cause not a lot of peo­ple out­side Co­conut Dri­ve know a lot about him.”