KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While some Moru­ga/Table­land con­stituents are hap­py that Lovell Fran­cis’ terms at their Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment may soon end, there are Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers who are threat­en­ing: “No Lovell, No Vote.”

Com­pound­ing sup­port­ers’ dis­sat­is­fac­tion at the PNM Moru­ga/Table­land’s con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive’s non-se­lec­tion of Fran­cis as its can­di­date was the prospect of Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ter be­ing his re­place­ment.

They still see Pe­ters, the for­mer MP for Or­toire/Ma­yaro un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, as a “UNC”.

Al­though UNC sup­port­ers are back­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor Michelle Ben­jamin, they see Pe­ters as a trai­tor for join­ing the PNM.

Pe­ters met res­i­dents of Marac and La Lune on Tues­day as he pre­pared for his elec­tion cam­paign.

“This is re­al­ly bad. I do not want Gyp­sy to rep­re­sent us. Lovell is the man. Gyp­sy was a UNC. He was in Or­toire/Ma­yaro. What did he do for us?” asked Cyril “Fran­co” Pope.

An el­der in the Marac com­mu­ni­ty, Pope said he would tell Row­ley: “No Lovell, no vote.”

He was sit­ting un­der a house among rel­a­tives, who said they rather not vote if the PNM re­places Lovell with Pe­ters. Pope said Lovell re­paired roads and built hous­es among oth­er things for con­stituents.

Clyde San­tana said most peo­ple in Marac sup­port Fran­cis. San­tana said that while Pe­ters did not grow up in Moru­ga like Fran­cis, he spent time in the com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing his younger years. San­tana said he has not seen Pe­ters in the com­mu­ni­ty for many years.

“Nor­mal­ly I do not vote, but if I have to vote and it is not Lovell, I pre­fer not the vote,” San­tana said.

In St Mary’s, Hes­per Ali ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment, say­ing that out of the pre­vi­ous MPs who rep­re­sent­ed them, Fran­cis did the most.

“What he did for us on the Moru­ga Road, no Par­lia­ment or gov­ern­ment did some­thing like that. We are dis­ap­point­ed. Fine, they’re say­ing he is not a per­son who they have a good rap­port with, but you can be talk­ing to some­one good, and at the end of the day you get no in­put and no in­fra­struc­ture done at all.

“We are very hurt and dis­ap­point­ed. I don’t know what these peo­ple want at the end of the day,” Ali said.

As the Guardian Me­dia team vis­it­ed the con­stituen­cy yes­ter­day, work con­tin­ued along the $178 mil­lion Moru­ga Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme.

The serene and pic­turesque com­mu­ni­ties pos­sess in­fra­struc­tur­al rem­nants of the old colo­nial days. While some re­ferred to them as “well-pre­served”, oth­ers see it as a lack of progress.

One Gran Chemin res­i­dent, who gave his name as Sun­dar, point­ed at the old Moru­ga Mag­is­trate Courts that was closed years ago.

He said this was just an ex­am­ple of the lack of de­vel­op­ment in the com­mu­ni­ty. He de­clared that he was a UNC sup­port­er. He said that it was on­ly the coun­cil­lor for the dis­trict, Joseph Lo­rant, who tries to help res­i­dents.

In La Lune, Yolande Bal­bosa said res­i­dents re­al­ly need change as they re­quire tap wa­ter, med­ica­tion and af­ford­able food prices as there were many im­pov­er­ished peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Bal­bosa said while Fran­cis has helped to pro­vide hous­es and roads, it was in oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

Maxi-Taxi dri­ver Mar­lon Duntin was not sur­prised at the change as there were com­plaints that Fran­cis was not per­form­ing well.

“If you are not per­form­ing, peo­ple will want you out. He and I played bas­ket­ball to­geth­er. He taught my chil­dren at Moru­ga An­gli­can right here so I know him. You can­not re­al­ly sat­is­fy peo­ple in Trinidad. We are get­ting our roads fixed, but you can’t sat­is­fy the peo­ple,” Duntin said.

Fran­cis, who pledged con­tin­ued sup­port for the PNM, be­lieves he ac­com­plished sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing his tenure.

He be­lieves the par­ty will re­tain the par­lia­men­tary seat in the elec­tions lat­er this year.