AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) can­di­date for Aranguez/St Joseph is fac­ing crit­i­cism from his com­peti­tors over his cel­e­bra­to­ry style of fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers with ac­cu­sa­tions that he dis­turbed schools in the area, where pupils are prepar­ing for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tions. 

How­ev­er, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh shrugged off the con­dem­na­tion yes­ter­day. 

Deyals­ingh ar­rived at the St Joseph Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre short­ly af­ter 9 am ac­com­pa­nied by a large crowd of sup­port­ers, a mu­sic truck, a pan band, moko jumbies and a tas­sa band. 

The MP him­self played the in­stru­ment for a while out­side of the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre which served as the nom­i­na­tion of­fice for the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy. 

This was in stark con­trast to how the oth­er can­di­dates con­duct­ed their af­fairs. The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ De­vesh Ma­haraj came with about three dozen peo­ple, how­ev­er, they walked silent­ly to the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. 

Ma­haraj said that it was a de­lib­er­ate move out of re­spect for the schools in the im­me­di­ate area. In fact, the St Joseph Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School is di­rect­ly op­po­site the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. 

“We took a de­ci­sion not to come with any noise or tas­sa like what is hap­pen­ing here. There are six schools in the area, and they are prepar­ing for SEA and right now they are hav­ing tests in the school. So, we took the de­ci­sion af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the rel­e­vant schools not to come with all of this noise,” Ma­haraj ex­plained. 

Mo­ments be­fore, the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance’s Gary Grif­fith, who was the first per­son to file his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, de­nounced the pageantry and rev­el­ry that comes with nom­i­na­tion day. 

Grif­fith came with no more than two peo­ple ac­com­pa­ny­ing him. 

The NTA leader was even up­set with Ma­haraj’s team even though they were silent. 

“I gave spe­cif­ic in­struc­tions to all 17 can­di­dates in­clu­sive of my­self not to be in­volved in this kind of cha­rade. This is ba­nana re­pub­lic pol­i­tics. You are of­fer­ing your ser­vices for a coun­try, you are sup­posed to be hum­ble, you are sup­posed to be a pa­tri­ot. And I said I don’t want any tas­sa drums, no rhythm sec­tion, no lots of peo­ple turn­ing up here, what are they turn­ing up here for?” he ques­tioned. 

Mar­cus Ramkissoon of the Trinidad Hu­man­i­ty Cam­paign (THC) par­ty said he came alone. 

“You all no­tice there is no mu­sic truck, I think if you all are re­al Trinida­di­ans and I come to you all of a sud­den and I have some big fan­fare but I want some­thing from you, you should know I am here to ma­m­aguy you,” he said.

When Guardian Me­dia brought their con­cerns to Deyals­ingh who was in a jovial mood bran­dish­ing his re­ceipt for the $5000 de­posit he made to con­test the elec­tion, he said, “This is a free coun­try, and I be­lieve in free­dom of speech.”

The is­sue of noise around schools dur­ing SEA prep was raised by the Lakhan Learn­ing Cen­tre in Ch­agua­nas via its Face­book page. 

The school in a state­ment said it was dif­fi­cult to con­duct mock ex­ams yes­ter­day. 

“I hope all po­lit­i­cal par­ties re­mem­ber that on April 10, 2025, from 8 am to at least 1:30 pm, stu­dents will be sit­ting the SEA ex­am and as such they should ad­vise their mu­sic trucks to de­sist from ad­ver­tis­ing or play­ing mu­sic at this time. This can be very dis­tract­ing for some of our stu­dents. My stu­dents are cur­rent­ly do­ing a mock ex­am while the build­ing is shak­ing from the vi­bra­tions of a parked mu­sic truck spon­sored by a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.” 

Mean­while, in La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, the is­sue of loud mu­sic was al­so a fo­cal point.

PNM can­di­date Fos­ter Cum­mings com­plained that po­lice of­fi­cers were be­ing un­fair while they sought to reg­u­late noise. 

“In what was a very strange oc­cur­rence this morn­ing, while the UNC was al­lowed to play their mu­sic and have their pro­ces­sion in an undis­turbed man­ner, the cam­paign team on the PNM side was told by the po­lice that they could not en­gage in the pro­ces­sion that they had planned.” Cum­mings ad­vised his sup­port­ers to com­ply. 

The UNC’s can­di­date, Phillip Watts sur­pris­ing­ly agreed that Cum­mings and his team were treat­ed un­fair­ly. 

“Well, it was a bit bi­ased to me, but at the end of it all every­thing worked out smooth­ly this morn­ing, no vi­o­lence, I am hap­py for that.”