Gail Alexan­der

It’s a four-way bat­tle for St Au­gus­tine so far af­ter Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad- Bachan yes­ter­day an­nounced she will con­test the St Au­gus­tine seat.

It is the COP’s bid to keep the seat fol­low­ing the 10-year tenure of COP MP for the area Prakash Ra­mad­har who was giv­en the UNC “safe seat” in the ce­ment­ing of the 2010 Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) coali­tion.

He re­tained it in 2015 elec­tion and was in Op­po­si­tion ranks when the PP lost the 2015 polls.

He’s been es­tranged from the COP since Seep­er­sad-Bachan’s lead­er­ship be­gan in 2017. Ra­mad­har said Mon­day he’d de­cid­ed to stay out of the up­com­ing elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day Seep­er­sad-Bachan was an­nounced as COP’s St Au­gus­tine can­di­date among three oth­er COP an­nounce­ments: Lons­dale Williams (Diego Mar­tin North East), Kurt Sin­nette (Laven­tille West), An­tho­ny De Four (Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West).

The COP is part of the Bet­ter Unit­ed group of par­ties con­test­ing in dif­fer­ent ar­eas. Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the COP will have a few more can­di­dates, but was stand­ing down in some ar­eas to al­low oth­er par­ties to con­test. The COP won’t be in San Fer­nan­do West where she said Proges­sive Par­ty leader Nikoli Ed­wards is con­test­ing. Nor will the COP con­test Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral where the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice is con­test­ing.

For up­com­ing polls, the UNC is seek­ing to re­take the seat with deputy leader Kadi­jah Ameen. The PNM’s can­di­date is Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh Sook­lal. In­shan Ishamel is al­so plan­ning to con­test that seat.

In the three-way fight of 2015, Ra­mad­har (with PP) won 12,606 votes to the PNM’s Al­isha Ro­mano’s with 6,186 and the NCT’s Nali­ni Di­al, 331.

On her bid for the COP to re­take the sea in the up­com­ing four-way fight, Seep­er­sad-Bachan said the “new nor­mal” that T&T goes for­ward with due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, de­mands change and she in­sists the elec­tion is part of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­tain this.

She added, “Change is re­quired for T&T and for the pop­u­la­tion to move on prop­er­ly, and progress. T&T is in the cur­rent state be­cause of the two par­ties we’ve had for years. We say let the change be­gin in St Au­gus­tine in this elec­tion. We say to con­stituents—Be You in this elec­tion.”

She said the COP had ad­vo­cat­ed peo­ple con­test­ing in ar­eas where they live to bet­ter rep­re­sent res­i­dents. She added that while she was San Fer­nan­do home­grown and had vot­ed there, she’s con­test­ing for the first time in the St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy, as she lives in Val­sayn.

Seep­er­sad-Bachan at­tend­ed uni­ver­si­ty in the area and was a UWI lec­tur­er for over 20 years al­so, “There’s al­ways been need to de­vel­op this area as a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion hub and in oth­er ar­eas in­clud­ing mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es. It’s very un­der­de­vel­oped and shouldn’t have been. Its short­com­ings were nev­er ful­ly ad­dressed through an MP.”

With that hit on the Op­po­si­tion’s for­mer rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the seat, she al­so ad­dressed her col­league Ra­mad­har’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

She said the COP hadn’t been op­er­at­ing in­de­pen­dent­ly when he was part of the Op­po­si­tion. She said the COP’s bid aims to change the sit­u­a­tion.

“This is about restor­ing pow­er to the Par­lia­ment to not on­ly de­bate is­sues but as a chan­nel for ac­count­abil­i­ty and for de­vel­op­ment to oc­cur. St Au­gus­tine has a re­al chance will to make this change.”

“Vot­ers must ful­ly un­der­stand this elec­tion isn’t about red or yel­low but to seek change by mak­ing the right choice. This is about you. The world has changed ir­rev­o­ca­bly. There’s a sec­ond econ­o­my which T&T must be part of and we have to change how we think or be lost. You must put a hand in­to shap­ing your fu­ture.”