SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

New­ly elect­ed chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) Anil Juter­am has promised to heed the ad­vice of his PNM pre­de­ces­sor Ter­ry Ron­don and not be tempt­ed by con­trac­tors who of­fer cash and bribes in ex­change for lu­cra­tive con­tracts. Ron­don gave the ad­vice yes­ter­day in his farewell speech as out­go­ing chair­man of the now UNC-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion.

The UNC won the mar­gin­al SGRC with five seats to the PNM’s three in the De­cem­ber 2 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion. Ron­don served as chair­man of the cor­po­ra­tion for six years.

At yes­ter­day’s cer­e­mo­ny four al­der­men were sworn in—PNM’s Roger Munroe, Danielle Mar­shall-Piper, UNC’s Keon An­ton Sa­roops­ingh and Su­san Stephanie-Hold­er. Ken­wyn Phillip, Coun­cil­lor for Man­zanil­la/Fish­ing Pond, was se­lect­ed as vice-chair­man.

The swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny was wit­nessed by UNC’s Pe­ter Kan­hai and Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein. Ab­sent were PNM’s To­co/San­gre Grande MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith, PNM’s cam­paign man­ag­er Ro­han Sinanan who can­vassed in the dis­trict for the LGE and Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Kaz­im Ho­sein.

As he sur­ren­dered his may­oral chain, Ron­don, who re­tained his Va­len­cia East/To­co seat, ad­vised the new coun­cil to de­sist from pulling and tug­ging.

“It’s no time for bick­er­ing. It’s time to work. Stop the cussing. Politi­cians have no right to be in hus­band and wife busi­ness,” he said

Dur­ing the elec­tion, Ron­don com­plained that his name had been sul­lied by his ri­vals.

“On the po­lit­i­cal plat­form they say all kind of things but I for­gave them. I say, Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do,” he said.

He promised to work with the UNC and Juter­am said he had no in­ten­tion of sab­o­tag­ing the coun­cil for po­lit­i­cal gain.

“Don’t ex­pect me to come here and un­der­mine any­body. I al­ways say this choos­ing of who you want to serve does not auger well for any politi­cian. You are the peo­ple’s coun­cil­lors. You have to be kind, re­spect­ful and cour­te­ous. Turn no one away,” Ron­don ad­vised

He said the job of a coun­cil­lor is tempt­ing as “con­trac­tors come to you with all sorts of mon­ey, ex­cuse and bad talk the oth­er con­trac­tor. Let they take you but not your name. Be very care­ful. Don’t com­pro­mise your in­tegri­ty at all.”

Ron­don al­so told the coun­cil­lors to avoid dri­ving in­to elec­toral dis­tricts with their car win­dows up.

“Keep on the ground with the peo­ple,” he urged, adding that the ob­jec­tive should be about serv­ing the peo­ple and de­liv­er­ing to their needs.

“If I catch (any­body) in po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in what I am about to do...any par­ty pol­i­tics, I done. Not one of you will say I show all yuh par­ty pol­i­tics,” he said

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Ron­don ad­vised Juter­am that his task would not be easy to carve a name for him­self in car­ry­ing out his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Juter­am said his aim is to have a unit­ed coun­cil “and to hit the ground run­ning in the in­ter­est of work­ing for the peo­ple.” He promised to tack­le ar­eas that have been ne­glect­ed and said he would heed Ron­don’s con­struc­tive ad­vice.

“One of the rea­son why we (UNC) is stand­ing here is be­cause we have lis­tened to the peo­ple,” Juter­am said.