Shal­iza Has­sanali

Prem­nath Din­di­al, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of CDS Trans­port Ltd has fi­nal­ly bro­ken his si­lence. Din­di­al-who ral­lied be­hind Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar us­ing a trail­er, bear­ing a pho­to­graph of her that tra­versed Trinidad lead­ing up to last year's gen­er­al elec­tion-opened a busi­ness (The Rise grill, restau­rant and bar in Ch­agua­nas) com­plete with the UNC's ris­ing sun em­blem, claimed that he pumped thou­sands of dol­lars in­to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship cam­paign. The man who se­cured sev­er­al mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts from the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment said last Sun­day at his restau­rant in Cen­tral: "I could go pub­licly and tell any­body I sup­port­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in many dif­fer­ent things." Say­ing he was dis­ap­point­ed by ram­pant crime un­der the PNM, Prem­nath Din­di­al ad­mit­ted to pump­ing large sums of mon­ey in­to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship cam­paign lead­ing up to the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion.

In one in­stance, Din­di­al said he forked out $100,000 on a 43-foot by nine-foot can­vas pho­to­graph of Siparia MP and then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, which was car­ried on one of his trail­ers across T&T to woo the elec­torate. As cit­i­zens grav­i­tat­ed to­wards Per­sad-Bisses­sar near­ing the elec­tion date, Din­di­al put an­oth­er trail­er on the road with a pho­to­graph of a group of young peo­ple, with the slo­gan em­bla­zoned "We Will Rise" at his ex­pense. Both trail­ers were put on dis­play at the PP's fi­nal ral­ly at the Aranguez Sa­van­nah. Din­di­al said he promised to foot the bill for the pho­tographs on the trail­ers fol­low­ing a meet­ing he had with a group of busi­ness­men who were back­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the coun­try's next PM. In ad­di­tion to this, Din­di­al said he al­so dished out mon­ey for the UNC's 2010 in­ter­nal elec­tion, which Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­test­ed and won.

Nephew kid­napped

Din­di­al said he sup­port­ed the PP fi­nan­cial­ly. Why? "Be­cause I thought at the time when you look at all the things put to­geth­er she (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) was the best." He al­so con­fessed to fund­ing six UNC can­di­dates-sup­ply­ing trans­port, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices and gen­er­a­tors at po­lit­i­cal meet­ings which "cost quite a lot." His mis­sion, he said, was to rid of the coun­try of the PNM af­ter his nephew was kid­napped a few years ago. He said a $3 mil­lion ran­som was be­ing de­mand­ed for the safe re­turn of his nephew. Din­di­al said af­ter much bar­gain­ing, the kid­nap­pers agreed to ac­cept $300,000 al­low­ing his nephew to go free. To­day, his nephew lives abroad, hav­ing fled T&T's soil out of fear. "I want­ed change like the thou­sands of oth­ers in the coun­try be­cause of the crime," Din­di­al said. Din­di­al said the same UNC can­di­dates he as­sist­ed are re­fus­ing to speak with him now, fear­ful that their cell­phones might be wire-tapped and con­ver­sa­tions mon­i­tored.

One year lat­er, Din­di­al is now ex­press­ing dis­plea­sure with the par­ty he ral­lied be­hind and sup­port­ed fi­nan­cial­ly. He be­lieves Gov­ern­ment is not man­ag­ing the coun­try ef­fec­tive­ly. Din­di­al said there are too many lies and cov­er ups in the Gov­ern­ment which need to be curbed. "Every­thing is a big cel­e­bra­tion and a par­ty. That is not good gov­er­nance. If they call an elec­tion to­mor­row they will lose be­cause peo­ple are dis­en­chant­ed. I for one will not vote." While it is said he was high­ly favoured un­der the PNM, hav­ing land­ed mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tracts-among them EM­B­DC, WASA and Plipde­co-he sais­d­he nev­er sup­port­ed the PNM.