PNM To­ba­go East Can­di­date Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy has dis­missed the food card al­le­ga­tions made by her op­po­nent Wat­son Duke.

Duke al­leged that food cards were be­ing dis­trib­uted with­out ac­count­abil­i­ty, as an elec­tion ploy by the Gov­ern­ment to buy votes.

Ques­tioned about the is­sue af­ter she filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers in To­ba­go on Fri­day, Web­ster-Roy said the al­le­ga­tions were base­less.

She said the process was trans­par­ent as each per­son was man­dat­ed to sign a de­c­la­ra­tion form. She said due to the COVID re­stric­tions, cards were per­son­al­ly de­liv­ered, but the sys­tem was above board

"Des­per­ate men clasp at straws, when you are drown­ing they will clasp and grab at straws. Mr Duke raised some al­le­ga­tions which have no ba­sis, when we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­trib­ute those food cards un­der the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme we had a set cri­te­ria we had to en­sure we met" she said.

Web­ster-Roy said she worked with the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion and a list was pro­vid­ed. She said each re­cip­i­ent of the 500 food cards had to sign a de­c­la­ra­tion form. She al­so ad­mit­ted that she trav­elled the length and breadth of To­ba­go East to de­liv­er some of the cards to fa­cil­i­tate food card re­cip­i­ents they could not find. How­ev­er, she stressed that the process was free of any form of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion or cor­rup­tion.

"No cor­rup­tion, no vic­tim­i­sa­tion, it didn't mat­ter. When I asked 'Are you a re­cip­i­ent of a card al­ready?' I nev­er asked what colour jer­sey you sup­port or what par­ty you be­long to, the on­ly ques­tions I asked, 'Do you gen­uine­ly have chil­dren in school on the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme? Are you gen­uine­ly in need? And if you read this de­c­la­ra­tion form and you sign it, are you pos­i­tive you are not go­ing to open your­self to any crim­i­nal of­fence or any crim­i­nal mat­ter?,' those were the on­ly ques­tions, so that is just non­sense.

"As usu­al, Mr Duke likes to raise dra­ma when he is un­der pres­sure, he is feel­ing the heat," she said.

Web­ster-Roy has two chal­lengers for the To­ba­go East Con­stituen­cy—Wat­son Duke for the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and Ju­lian­na Hen­ry-King for the One To­ba­go Voice (OTV).