CHARLES KONG SOO

PNM can­di­date for St Joseph and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says the al­le­ga­tions made by Anil Roberts in a video that his daugh­ter-in-law had breached COVID-19 pro­to­col while at­tend­ing a re­cent wed­ding is rid­dled with in­ac­cu­ra­cies.

He was speak­ing to re­porters while wear­ing a face shield af­ter vot­ing at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege.

Af­ter dis­pens­ing with the pleas­antries that the vot­ing process was very smooth and en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to come out and vote adding that it was "ab­solute­ly safe", Deyals­ingh said "The Anil Roberts video is wrong on many fac­tu­al counts. my daugh­ter-in-law did, in fact, go to a wed­ding in To­ba­go.

"She did not stay with the group of doc­tors who were quar­an­tined; she was by her­self.

"When she came back to Trinidad at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2 pm on Sun­day, she was then in­formed of the sit­u­a­tion. And by 6 pm, she was in self-quar­an­tine and they are not vot­ing to­day."

He said there were no up­dates on the doc­tors' quar­an­tine sta­tus, on­ly the CMO Roshan Paras­ram would re­ceive them.

When asked if the doc­tors can still vote, Deyals­ingh said he was not aware of that, but quar­an­tine meant quar­an­tine, and his daugh­ter-in-law will not be vot­ing.

He said he waged a clean cam­paign as op­posed to his UNC op­po­nent, Ahloy Hunt, who en­gaged in so much char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion that it wasn't fun­ny bring­ing his per­son­al life in­to the is­sue.

Re­gard­ing his per­for­mance as Min­is­ter of Health, if it may boost his chances as MP or had it tak­en away from his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as MP, Deyals­ingh said con­stituents don't vote for a min­is­ter be­cause he was the most bril­liant min­ster, if he doesn't de­liv­er wa­ter, pave a road or ad­dress their needs; he doesn't get a sec­ond chance of a PNM con­stituent.

He said his role yes­ter­day was to be re­elect­ed as an MP, his per­for­mance as min­is­ter of health will have ab­solute­ly no bear­ing on how PNM peo­ple vot­ed.