Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

"Close that 'red door'  and en­ter the  'House of Yel­low.'

UNC La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro can­di­date Phillip Watts has called out to PN­Mites, rub­bish­ing the PNM's “love” mantra.”

Speak­ing at last night’s UNC meet­ing in La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro, Watts shone a neg­a­tive spot­light on the PNM of which he had pre­vi­ous­ly been a part for 14 years. He was suc­cess­ful­ly screened as UNC’s La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro can­di­date re­cent­ly. His de­fec­tion to UNC has been slammed by the PNM in­clud­ing for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley at last Sun­day’s PNM event in Port of Spain.

Call­ing out  PN­Mites, Watts added, “The PNM de­serves a rest, the PNM has lost its way. They are no longer fit to lead T&T  any­more. Fool me once, fool me twice but nev­er three times! Vote dem out!”

Watts slammed  La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro MP Fos­ter Cum­mings where farm­ers of the ar­eas were con­cerned.

“The ’food bas­ket’ he talked of is ba­si­cal­ly emp­ty, and the peo­ple are starv­ing; prae­di­al lar­ce­ny is still on the rise, and frus­trat­ed farm­ers can’t man­age their liveli­hood,” Watts said.

Say­ing La Hor­quet­ta-Tal­paro res­i­dents de­served an MP who was there for them, Watts spoke of prob­lems in the area, from wa­ter to in­fra­struc­ture.

“Peo­ple are cry­ing  out  for food ask­ing me for  ham­pers,” he added, claim­ing Cum­mings has not asked those whose homes were de­mol­ished if they “want a bot­tle of wa­ter.” 

Cit­ing the PNM’s mantra of “We love you so, we take good care of you,” Watts added, “What does that mean—how to starve and trick a na­tion? 

This is the dis­turb­ing re­al­i­ty of this con­stituen­cy. Give  your­selves  a chance to breathe, I’m here to shine a light through that dark tun­nel.”

Watts claimed res­i­dents would be called by the HDC for roof con­tracts. “That is to ma­m­aguy you, but that ent work­ing here tonight! So when they come knock­ing on your doors af­ter ten years say­ing things will be dif­fer­ent, tell them that ent work­ing here tonight!”

UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal, who said  Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley left T&T worse than how he met it,  claimed five at­tor­neys who were ap­proached to be­come At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, re­ject­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer.

He asked if the for­mer AG Regi­nald Ar­mour “used the of­fice to so­lic­it” the job he went to, and he claimed that Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was “dis­qual­i­fied “ from be­ing AG.

Mooni­lal said she was in charge of su­per­vis­ing do­mes­tic in­sti­tu­tions in­volv­ing large sources of funds, yet in 2016 he al­leged she “couldn’t ex­plain an FCB de­posit,” he added, query­ing if a probe on that was com­plete.

”Stu­art Young’s first act was to ap­point her—that was a mis­take, and he’ll make more mis­takes to come. They haven’t at­tract­ed one new face with pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise, yet they want to fool you!” Mooni­lal added.