Wes­ley Gib­bings

San Fer­nan­do West in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, Jow­elle De Souza, in­sists that her turn at the polls on Sep­tem­ber 7 "will be the first and the last time that I am in­to this."

The 41-year-old hair styl­ist, phil­an­thropist and an­i­mal wel­fare ac­tivist says her de­ci­sion to run came about a year ago when she de­tect­ed a high lev­el of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the con­stituen­cy.

She how­ev­er ad­mits to have been "born in­to the UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) fam­i­ly" and still gives the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, on a scale of one to ten, a "sev­en" and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) a "ze­ro" for ac­cept­abil­i­ty.

"I hon­est­ly thought that we the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do...were so com­plete­ly fed-up of the way pol­i­tics ran in T&T that we were re­al­ly ready to vote for an in­de­pen­dent to show the rest of the coun­try that we are go­ing put the first in­de­pen­dent in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to be able to do what is right for the coun­try," De Souza told T&T Guardian at her San Fer­nan­do sa­lon.

"Yet a year down the line I still find that peo­ple talk about par­ty pol­i­tics," she added. "But we have un­til Sep­tem­ber 8 to see if that is so."

In light of this, what does the San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date con­sid­er to be her chance of win­ning?

"As of now, I see two po­lit­i­cal par­ties frus­trat­ing the life out of T&T...but you can nev­er tell," she replied.

De Souza's cam­paign fo­cus­es al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties for the con­stituen­cy and the city's wa­ter­front plans are high up on the agen­da.

"We are a dy­ing city," she con­tend­ed. "In the last 15 years we have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed."

But the 41-year-old can­di­date al­so has strong views on some of the head­line is­sues she can be ex­pect­ed to con­front should she win the seat.

She be­lieves, for ex­am­ple, that par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should not al­so be per­mit­ted to hold min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tions and this should be re­flect­ed in the coun­try's con­sti­tu­tion. In her case, she sug­gests, this ques­tion would not arise since she would have no po­lit­i­cal leader to dic­tate to her.

"The gov­ern­ment has ve­to pow­er, so if the prime min­is­ter says to take a min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion, you take a min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion, and as an MP one would suf­fer," she said.

De Souza will al­so not stand in the way of the death penal­ty. "We have a very bad and a very high crime rate here in Trinidad and I sup­port the death penal­ty 100 per cent," she said.

The pop­u­lar south­ern hair styl­ist is al­so an ad­vo­cate of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my by fur­ther ven­tures in­to the tourism and fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, cit­ing Caribbean coun­tries such as Sint Maarten, Cu­ra­cao and the Cay­man Is­lands.

On the ques­tion of "mar­riage equal­i­ty", or "same-sex mar­riage", as re­cent­ly ruled by the US Supreme Court, she is more ret­i­cent and de­scribes the is­sue as "ten­der".

"T&T has no cas­es of that as we speak," she said. "It would be pre­ma­ture of me to come here now and dis­cuss that when there has been no prece­dent.

"I will tell you that there will be no one com­ing with that in the fore­front right now," De Souza said. "We are not a First World na­tion. I don't think that peo­ple are think­ing of that."

She how­ev­er con­cedes that "there are peo­ple who live to­geth­er."

"They are very hap­py with that and so it makes me hap­py that they are hap­py with that," she added. "It is a pre­ma­ture thing to think about it."

The San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date ben­e­fit­ed from sex re­as­sign­ment surgery in 1993 and her can­di­da­cy has re­port­ed­ly raised eye­brows in some quar­ters.

De Souza has how­ev­er been na­tion­al­ly recog­nised for her work as an an­i­mal rights ac­tivist, win­ning a Hum­ming Bird Medal (Bronze) in 2014.

"One of the cri­te­ria for first world na­tion is how we treat our an­i­mals," she said. "It is a very high pri­or­i­ty (and) in every good (holy) book they speak about an­i­mals.

"I put my an­i­mals first in my life, and every­body else..." she smiles broad­ly and does not fin­ish the sen­tence. She how­ev­er plans to com­plete the elec­tions course, win, lose or draw.