"The prop­er­ty tax dealt me a ca­reer blow," said Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's can­di­date for San Fer­nan­do West Ju­nia Re­grel­lo one day af­ter he was de­feat­ed in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Re­grel­lo, who lost his seat to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) can­di­date Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan, be­lieves peo­ple in the up­scale ar­eas did not vote for him be­cause of the con­tro­ver­sial prop­er­ty tax. Iron­i­cal­ly, the abol­ish­ment of the prop­er­ty tax is one of the elec­tion promis­es of Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is to be sworn in to­day as T&T'S first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter. In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Re­grel­lo point­ed out that there were strange ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the con­stituen­cy on elec­tion day, such as Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er's pres­ence on the train line in Mara­bel­la. "But hon­est­ly I do not think that re­al­ly af­fect­ed the re­sults," he said.

Based on the re­sults, he said he fell short in the mid­dle and up­scale ar­eas, such as Gulf View. He added: "There were three peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar in the Gulf View area who asked about it. "They said if the prop­er­ty tax was there they were not go­ing to give me their vote. "We won from Vista­bel­la bridge to Pointe-a-Pierre bridge. We lost in those ar­eas where there were up­per and mid­dle class. The prop­er­ty tax was a ca­reer blow. That would have been the ma­jor fac­tor." Rat­ing his per­for­mance in the last two-and-half years in of­fice as ex­cel­lent, Re­grel­lo said it was iron­ic that the up­scale area of Gulf View got the biggest slice of cake but yet they did not give him their vote.

He said: "I spent over $20 mil­lion there. I built 11 drains in Gulf View, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre which I did not get the chance to open and a pave­ment in Gulf View Dri­ve." He said a recre­ation park and swim­ming pool were al­so on stream. "The peo­ple of Gulf View did not vote for per­for­mance but I still love them," he said. An up­beat Re­grel­lo said he thought he did ex­treme­ly well when com­pared to some of his col­leagues, such as Pointe-a-Pierre can­di­date Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Barataria/San Juan can­di­date Joseph Ross, who lost by thou­sands.