Afia Grif­fith is the on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the To­ba­go-based Uni­ty of the Peo­ple (UTP) po­lit­i­cal par­ty in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion race.

Grif­fith will be con­test­ing to rep­re­sent the Febeau/Bourg Mu­la­tresse dis­trict in the San Juan/ Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion come Au­gust 14.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day via a tele­phone in­ter­view, Grif­fith said she want­ed to make a change in her com­mu­ni­ty, which still does not have a re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply.

Grif­fith, 36, is a law stu­dent, a sin­gle moth­er and a tech­ni­cian who said she has the full sup­port of her fam­i­ly.

“I keep telling my fam­i­ly I am go­ing to be the prime min­is­ter one day. I want to do more for my com­mu­ni­ty and my coun­try. This is 2023 and there are not any wa­ter sup­ply lines in some parts of the com­mu­ni­ty. Peo­ple are still get­ting wa­ter from a spring (well),” she ex­plained.

Grif­fith said she was not moved to join or rep­re­sent oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty be­cause of the type of cam­paign­ing they en­gaged in.

She said any par­ty she worked with must put the peo­ple first and must be fo­cused on cre­at­ing har­mo­ny through­out the coun­try.

“I am look­ing for uni­ty. At the end of the day, I would have to work with the rul­ing par­ty to get fund­ing for my projects,” she said.

Grif­fith said she had been well re­ceived by the vot­ers in the dis­trict.

“When you lis­ten to the gen­er­al pub­lic the say they are fed up, but they must move past the stage of air­ing the con­cerns and go out and vote. Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions is for the diehards who get up and go and vote ear­ly. It’s the diehards that go a long way in get­ting their par­ty in­to of­fice. I want to reach out to the diehards, the youths, to every­one to get their votes. At the end of the day, I want to get in and fix the needs of the peo­ple,” Grif­fith said.

She added, “Once I win the seat, we will look at what re­sources are avail­able to bring re­lief to the peo­ple. If we don’t get Gov­ern­ment fund­ing, we would have fund rais­ers.”

Grif­fith said she was not re­lat­ed to for­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith, nor was she con­nect­ed in any way to his par­ty.

The leader of the UTP, Nick­o­cy Phillips, said some com­mu­ni­ties in the San Juan/Laven­tille cor­po­ra­tion were de­plorable. Speak­ing yes­ter­day by tele­phone, Phillips said Grif­fith is a can­di­date of in­tegri­ty who has a gen­uine in­ter­est in her com­mu­ni­ty.

Phillips said four peo­ple were se­lect­ed to fight oth­er seats for the UTP but they backed out at the last minute. The UTP po­lit­i­cal leader said the par­ty stopped the screen­ing process be­cause some peo­ple were com­ing and de­mand­ing mon­ey and oth­er perks to rep­re­sent the par­ty.

Phillips said the UTP stood for in­tegri­ty and bring­ing peace and uni­ty to the peo­ple and would not sup­port dirty pol­i­tics.