The Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) and the Re­unit­ed Farm­ers Al­liance kicked off their joint cam­paign for the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion on Sat­ur­day. The event be­gan with a mo­tor­cade through the bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas that made its first stop at Pe­ter’s Field, Fe­lic­i­ty where the gov­ern­ment has pro­posed a hous­ing project on lands that were owned by Ca­roni 1975 Lim­it­ed. Farm­ers oc­cu­py­ing the lands were re­moved ear­li­er this year to make way for a hous­ing project.

PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der said farm lands should re­main in agri­cul­ture. “We need food grow­ing in this coun­try, we need to save for­eign ex­change, we need to cre­ate jobs and we need to cre­ate agro-pro­cess­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

Alexan­der said the in­fra­struc­ture is fail­ing in T&T and the gov­ern­ment is of­fer­ing lit­tle so­lu­tions. He said should his team at­tain of­fice they would look at de­liv­er­ing the goods to burgess­es. He added, “We want to make sure the peo­ple get rep­re­sen­ta­tion. We want the lo­cal gov­ern­ment, cen­tral gov­ern­ment to de­liv­er to the peo­ple.”

De­vi­ka Thomas, the leader of the Re­unit­ed Farm­ers Al­liance said the joint cam­paign would fo­cus strong­ly on food se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. Thomas said the 5000 acres of farm land in Fe­lic­i­ty was bull­dozed at tremen­dous costs to farm­ers who had to be dis­placed. “These lands are re­served for East Port of Spain peo­ple and Petrotrin peo­ple.”

Thomas said the full slate of can­di­dates would be pre­sent­ed on Sun­day at Vic­to­ria Square, Port of Spain.

Lil­lian Mary Joseph, the Re­unit­ed Farm­ers Al­liance can­di­date for Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our, said her par­ty is fo­cus­ing on the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

While at the UNC camp in Fe­lic­i­ty a UNC Can­di­date re­spond­ed to a smear cam­paign.

Sun­dar Jokoo, UNC Can­di­date for Fe­lic­i­ty/En­deav­our, a new­com­er to elec­toral pol­i­tics said a smear cam­paign tar­get­ing him on so­cial me­dia is on­ly help­ing him to get more pop­u­lar.

Jookoo said pri­or to be­ing se­lect­ed as a can­di­date for the area he was an avid com­mu­ni­ty and so­cial work­er.

He is the head of the First Fe­lic­i­ty Ram­leela Group and an ac­tive mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty watch group.

He said, “The neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty says that some­body is scared of me, so they look at any nook and cran­ny to get some­thing, it doesn’t get to me. It is work­ing in my favour be­cause the more they try to tar­nish my name, its an­gry­ing the vil­lagers are get­ting and the ones who said they wouldn’t vote are now say­ing they would come and vote.” Jookoo added that get­ting in­to of­fice would em­pow­er him to bring de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for young peo­ple, sin­gle par­ents and self-em­ployed peo­ple.