Tunapuna con­stituents said high crime and a de­sire for change in rep­re­sen­ta­tion led to for­mer MP Es­mond Forde’s elec­tion de­feat.

Forde had served as MP for ten years and be­fore that he had been coun­cil­lor for Au­zonville-Tu­na­puna for five years. He al­so served as Vice Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion for two years.

Forde, known as an af­fa­ble, down-to-earth politi­cian, earned 6,943 votes, well be­hind the UNC’s Roger Alexan­der who amassed 8,466 votes.

In Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day, sev­er­al res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers said crime was one of the biggest prob­lems in the con­stituen­cy and while Forde was a friend­ly, pop­u­lar fig­ure in Tu­na­puna, de­ci­sive ac­tion was need­ed to tack­le the is­sue.

Ni­la Fer­di­nand, a ven­dor, said crime and safe­ty were ma­jor is­sues that had not been ad­dressed for years.

“You don’t even want to walk cer­tain times of the night on reg­u­lar streets, far less on back streets be­cause of how se­ri­ous it is,” she said.

“I was the vic­tim of crime years ago. Thank God I didn’t get beat­en but they took stuff I had. I pray that things will get bet­ter un­der Alexan­der.”

Fer­di­nand said while Forde was well-liked, un­kept promis­es may have frus­trat­ed some vot­ers, lead­ing to their choice to elect a new MP.

“When you hear peo­ple talk, you re­al­ly hear what peo­ple have in their mind.

“They might not tell him but peo­ple want­ed a change and some of these politi­cians just tell us, the peo­ple what we want to hear and they’re not do­ing what they say they will do, so all of that may be why peo­ple say, ‘Let us give him a rest and give some­body else a chance.”

An­oth­er Tu­na­puna res­i­dent who asked to be iden­ti­fied on­ly as Has­sanali said crime was a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge af­fect­ing pri­vate cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es alike.

Re­fer­ring to his own ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing robbed at a work­site in Mau­si­ca, he said the fear of crim­i­nals was a pow­er­ful fac­tor in de­cid­ing on a leader.

A busi­ness­man who asked not to be named said ex­tor­tions prompt­ed some busi­ness own­ers to seek new rep­re­sen­ta­tion from some­one who would treat the mat­ter with greater ur­gency.

“It nev­er hap­pened to me per­son­al­ly, but with­in my cir­cle peo­ple were re­al­ly frus­trat­ed by the ex­tor­tion,” he said.

“You have peo­ple look­ing over their shoul­der every time they open up on a morn­ing and leave in the night. We can’t con­tin­ue like that and we just don’t feel like he (Forde) was tak­ing it se­ri­ous­ly.”

At­tempts to con­tact Forde for a re­sponse yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful. How­ev­er, when he spoke with re­porters af­ter fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers on April 4, he said crime was be­ing dealt with at the na­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty lev­el in Tu­na­puna.

“The gov­ern­ment as well as the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty have been do­ing their best, along with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice with re­gards to this,” he said.

“In Tu­na­puna we have been do­ing our best with the Tu­na­puna Res­i­dent Po­lice As­so­ci­a­tion which con­sists of po­lice and civil­ians which has been in op­er­a­tion for sev­en years.”

MP-elect Roger Alexan­der said his suc­cess was due to his com­mit­ment to meet­ing with as many res­i­dents as pos­si­ble dur­ing his walk­a­bouts to hear their con­cerns.

He said crime was one of the most com­mon com­plaints from res­i­dents, but he al­so in­tend­ed to de­vel­op the com­mu­ni­ty in oth­er ar­eas in­clud­ing vo­ca­tion­al train­ing for youths.

“One of the first things, the youths are the fu­ture and we de­pend on them, so let’s get them off and run­ning be­cause if we don’t pre­pare them now, we won’t have lead­ers for the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” Alexan­der said.

“I said give me six to eight months of your life, skill them prop­er­ly, cer­ti­fy them and have them up and run­ning. We must pro­vide fa­cil­i­ties for them to start some sort of busi­ness.”

Pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber Ra­mon Gre­go­rio said while he could not pro­vide a spe­cif­ic ex­pla­na­tion for Forde’s de­feat, he felt it was part of a wider trend ob­served from the elec­tion re­sults.

“I think it’s a wider con­ver­sa­tion of the in­cum­bent be­com­ing un­pop­u­lar, peo­ple not be­ing sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo and want­i­ng change and that’s what’s re­flect­ed in the re­sults, peo­ple want­ed change and change is what they got,” he said.

“At the end of the day, I think it’s a wake-up call for the PNM but at the same time it al­so speaks vol­umes to peo­ple pow­er and our abil­i­ty to change and seize con­trol when we feel things are not go­ing in a par­tic­u­lar di­rec­tion.”

Gre­go­rio said the Cham­ber met with Alexan­der be­fore he was elect­ed and they dis­cussed crime pre­ven­tion, eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion and leg­isla­tive re­form.