Camille McEach­nie

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date for Belle Gar­den East/Rox­bor­ough/De­laford Neil Beck­les is ready to wrest the seat away from the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) "ab­sen­tee" leader Wat­son Duke on Jan­u­ary 25, 2021, in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's (THA) elec­tions.

Beck­les made his in­ten­tions clear at a PNM pub­lic meet­ing at the Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary School on Tues­day.

Speak­ing to par­ty mem­bers seat­ed in the school's hall, Beck­les said to rid To­ba­go of the PDP, the PNM must first rid the THA of Duke.

He said Duke did not rep­re­sent the dis­trict prop­er­ly over the past four years as he had missed many Ple­nary Sit­tings.

"I will not be the kind of ab­sen­tee rep­re­sen­ta­tive or the type of rep­re­sen­ta­tive you will see some­times," Beck­les said.

He said his train­ing as a sol­dier and on the foot­ball field pre­pared him to bat­tle Duke and the PDP.

Battle For Tobago

"I can tell you one of the eas­i­est ways to win your bat­tle is sev­er the head. But I be­lieve the op­pos­ing side has al­ready com­mit­ted sui­cide," he said to ap­plause and laugh­ter from the crowd.

Shar­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, the To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son -Ce­les­tine, who al­so ad­dressed the crowd, said Beck­les would be present at Ple­nary Sit­tings, un­like Duke.

"If you were to go back to the Hansard (re­ports) ...one of the things you would find is that the im­me­di­ate for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tive ...was hard­ly present in any of the Sit­tings."

Adding: "Since I was there, I could count the num­ber of times he was in the House to rep­re­sent you the peo­ple Rox­bor­ough/De­laford, and the thing about that Sit­ting is that it is held once per month."

She said the PDP had shown it could not rep­re­sent the con­stituents, but the PNM of­fered rep­re­sen­ta­tion and sta­bil­i­ty.

"All oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties are sink­ing sand. The PDP has no struc­ture. They have no sys­tems, and most im­por­tant­ly they have no leader at this time," David­son- Ce­les­tine said.