Yvonne Webb

For­mer San Fer­nan­do may­or Ian Ather­ly has de­nied re­ports he was paid to join the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment. Un­der fire for switch­ing al­le­giance from the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) to the PP, Ather­ly said, yes­ter­day: "I can­not be bought. What are they go­ing to buy me with, a house, a Sen­tra or a Civic, I dri­ve a BMW car."

Speak­ing dur­ing a walk­a­bout in Mara­bel­la yes­ter­day Ather­ly al­so de­nied he was swayed by the promise of a may­oral chain to join Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's-led Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC). "I am not seek­ing may­oral of­fice be­cause I came in late. I am sure the par­ty al­ready made its choice for may­or," Ather­ly said. "I have made it clear, time-af­ter-time, that I am an ac­tivist for the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do. I am about ser­vice," he added. Ather­ly, who joined Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal on the walk­a­bout in sup­port of can­di­date Ja­son Williams, al­so de­nied re­ports he took a bribe in ex­change for his rec­om­men­da­tion to as­sist cit­i­zens in get­ting HDC hous­es.

"Bring for­ward proof. I can stand up to any scruti­ny," Ather­ly chal­lenged. He said: "My busi­ness is open for any au­dit or scruti­ny at any­time. The pa­per trail is there for any­one to view." Ather­ly said he was dis­turbed by the crit­i­cisms be­ing lev­elled against him fol­low­ing his ap­pear­ance on a PP's po­lit­i­cal plat­form in San Fer­nan­do last Fri­day. He said: "When I was, not even on the back-burn­er, but in the pantry for the past four years, no­body had any­thing to say. "Now that I have moved from the pantry to the back-burn­er of the stove, I have done some­thing wrong. "Is it that my con­tri­bu­tion has to be iso­lat­ed to on­ly with­in the PNM. Can't I con­tribute else­where?" Ather­ly asked.

He said for the past four years, af­ter he was un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly fired as May­or of San Fer­nan­do, he had been locked up and si­lenced.

"Now that I have made a per­son­al de­ci­sion, I am be­ing crit­i­cised." De­scrib­ing him­self as a true pa­tri­ot, Ather­ly asked: "What more do they want from me?