Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A vi­o­lent clash be­tween two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress mem­bers sup­port­ing op­pos­ing slates at a polling sta­tion in Pe­nal left one man bleed­ing and bruised.

The vi­o­lent out­burst oc­curred at the Pe­nal Pres­by­ter­ian School dur­ing the UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions yes­ter­day. 

Speak­ing out­side the Debe Po­lice Post, La Ro­main coun­cil­lor Shel­don Lall said he has al­ready giv­en the po­lice a state­ment about the in­ci­dent.

Show­ing Guardian Me­dia his swollen bust­ed lip and bruised el­bow, he re­called that Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo had asked for as­sis­tance at the polling sta­tion at the Pe­nal Gov­ern­ment School. Tan­coo is one of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Star Team’s chair­man can­di­dates.

When he got there af­ter lunch, he said there were “some hard words” be­tween a group of peo­ple dressed in blue jer­seys and Tan­coo’s sec­re­tary.

He in­ter­vened and said, “They were call­ing her names that I be­lieve a woman is not sup­posed to be ad­dressed in that man­ner. I walked up to the gen­tle­man un­con­scious that the gen­tle­man was go­ing to cuff me. I told him, I said ‘Sir, at the end of the day, we are UNC, and we will re­main UNC.” 

He claimed the man at­tacked him. 

“The man hit me a cuff. I hit the ground. I buss my lip. He dam­aged my arm and my ribs. I have lim­it­ed move­ments on the right side of my foot ... I hit my head too when I fall.”

Lall said the po­lice took a state­ment from him at the school, and he sought pri­vate med­ical at­ten­tion. 

While he did not know his at­tack­er per­son­al­ly, he had seen him with UP’s sup­port­ers. Claim­ing that an­oth­er man al­so wear­ing a blue jer­sey told him, “This eh done yet,” as he was leav­ing, Lall claimed he was al­so threat­ened by an­oth­er man wear­ing a blue jer­sey who told him “this eh done yet.” 

He lament­ed, “I was not ex­pect­ing this to reach this stage, at the end of the day this is a UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions.”   

La For­tune/Debe North coun­cil­lor Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh said he wit­nessed the at­tack, and he and oth­er peo­ple rushed to the man’s as­sis­tance. Dis­ap­point­ed by the ac­tions, he said there is usu­al­ly “ban­ter” in the UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions but nev­er phys­i­cal vi­o­lence.

How­ev­er, a com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist claimed Lall at­tacked the man who act­ed in self-de­fence.