Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

There is no seat more mar­gin­al than the con­stituen­cy of Aranguez/St Joseph. Some con­stituents have sent a warn­ing to in­cum­bent MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh that he might not be three times lucky with their vote if his pres­ence is not felt more in the for­mer St Joseph seat.

In the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tions, on­ly 823 votes sep­a­rat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Deyals­ingh from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date Ahloy Hunt. Deyals­ingh ac­crued 9362 votes against Hunt’s 8539 with 63.7 per cent of the con­stituen­cy’s elec­torate cast­ing votes.

The size of the elec­torate there was 28,553 as of No­vem­ber 2024 ac­cord­ing to the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), spread across 43 polling di­vi­sions. Its name change did not shift any of its bound­aries but mere­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed Aranguez to more prop­er­ly re­flect the ge­o­graph­ic area with­in the con­stituen­cy.

With a cur­rent seat al­lot­ment of 22 for the PNM and 19 for the UNC, the gap is so mea­gre that Aranguez/St Joseph is a seat the PNM can­not af­ford to lose. The UNC needs just two con­stituen­cies to change al­le­giances for vic­to­ry at the polls.

The UNC’s de­sire for the con­stituen­cy could be seen in the fact that its can­di­date, at­tor­ney-at-law De­vesh Ma­haraj, had been se­lect­ed since last year. Oth­er prospec­tive can­di­dates have been wait­ing weeks and months to hear their fate but Ma­haraj was screened on De­cem­ber 19, and named as the can­di­date just three days lat­er.

UNC in­sid­ers said that the same ap­proach was tak­en in To­co/San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do West as the UNC be­lieves its suc­cess in the up­com­ing elec­tions lies in those three con­stituen­cies.

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to con­test the seat with its po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith lead­ing that charge.

But what are the peo­ple on the ground say­ing?

Polling di­vi­sion da­ta in­di­cates that the com­mu­ni­ty of Mt D’or leans heav­i­ly to­wards the rul­ing par­ty. How­ev­er, at the Easy E Bar, there are dis­sent­ing opin­ions on Deyals­ingh’s per­for­mance as MP.

An­tho­ny Odle and Do­minic Sal­vary shared a shad­ed bench un­der a tree op­po­site the bar but their po­lit­i­cal views could not be more con­trast­ing.

“I love him, I love the guy, he’s a good guy. He means good. For sure he has my vote,” Odle said about Deyals­ingh.

How­ev­er, 79-year-old Sal­vary ve­he­ment­ly dis­agreed.

“I don’t have no faith in him. In the last elec­tion, I told him I am not go­ing to vote for the PNM. I won’t give PNM a chance at all. The UNC? Prob­a­bly,” he said.

Odle said his vote is go­ing toDeyals­ingh and he would not en­ter­tain the NTA at all.

“I’m afraid of Gary ... I afraid of him. I don’t know De­vesh Ma­haraj too much be­cause I haven’t seen him as yet,” he said.

The two found com­mon views when asked about their ma­jor con­cerns in the con­stituen­cy.

Sal­vary said there are too many young peo­ple with too much free time in the com­mu­ni­ty.

“They need some­thing some­how, some school­ing, some­body to hold them by their ears like how our grand­moth­er used to do it long time and pull them to learn some­thing. You have to rough them,” Odle said.

Fur­ther up the hill in Mt D’or 29-year-old Quin­cy Cox said the old men were over­sim­pli­fy­ing the is­sue.

He said while there are sev­er­al state pro­grammes for young peo­ple, many are un­able to at­tend due to fam­i­ly com­mit­ments.

“Even though it good you know, at the end of the day peo­ple need mon­ey. You can’t start off a pro­gramme and do al­most a 9 to 5 and while it is to help you out, it’s pres­sure just to get pas­sage to go when you are just get­ting a stipend,” he said.

“For ex­am­ple the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), the pro­gramme nice but just for this week two youths asked for $20 to trav­el to get there.”

Cox said he’s not hap­py with the rul­ing par­ty.

“The PNM par­ty in a whole lacaray, and that’s be­cause they not com­ing to talk to the vil­lagers.”

An­oth­er young man who asked to re­main anony­mous was more di­rect in his crit­i­cism of Deyals­ingh.: “You see how I see you once here? I not sure to see him again. We have to try some­thing new, right now PNM has no chance.”

The young man, who was sell­ing cig­a­rettes from a trans­par­ent plas­tic back­pack, point­ed at the Mt D’or Pri­ma­ry School. He said en­rol­ment has dropped pre­cip­i­tous­ly in the last few years as peo­ple are los­ing con­fi­dence in the area’s ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions.

“Peo­ple send­ing their chil­dren out­side in­stead of in­side be­cause they think they will get a bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion for them. But it shouldn’t be, this is for the com­mu­ni­ty it sup­posed to be good for us. Watch the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, where is the post of­fice? We had all these things,” he said.

Both men ex­pressed a re­luc­tance to vote and had huge reser­va­tions about giv­ing Grif­fith a chance to rep­re­sent them as they called him an “en­forcer” who might deal with young peo­ple with a heavy hand.

Over in Mt Hope, there was more love for the MP.

An­na Don­na-Hol­land said: “Yes I am sat­is­fied with his rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­cause he did for his con­stituen­cy and I am okay with it. He does not come reg­u­lar­ly but he does come around and you can go to his of­fice any­time, talk to him and you get help.”

How­ev­er, she said she will see what Grif­fith has to of­fer in the com­ing weeks.

At the cor­ner of Aber­crom­by and KingSstreets in St Joseph out­side the pop­u­lar Nyabinghi Bar where Deyals­ingh was robbed last Sep­tem­ber, bar own­er Jef­frey Al­suran had no sym­pa­thy for the MP who he ac­cused of los­ing touch with the peo­ple who sup­port­ed him.

“Be­fore elec­tion, he came here when my moth­er was alive. He used to come every so of­ten like a Sun­day and speak to Mum­my,” he re­called.

“About six months now, I in front of my gate now, so he passed and said ‘Hey, how are you go­ing?’ I said, ‘I’m fine’, he said How is your mum­my?’, I said ‘But Mum­my died two years now, you didn’t know Mum­my died?’

“I told him this is to show you, how you all does come around here. That is the way that peo­ple see you. Very rare we see you!” he an­gri­ly said.

Al­suran said it might be time for the seat to go to the UNC.

Strong sup­port for UNC in Aranguez

Not sur­pris­ing­ly there is strong sup­port for Ma­haraj in the Aranguez area., the heart of the UNC’s base in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy.

Tak­ing a break from the crick­et on the tele­vi­sion screen at Kil­ly’s and Sons Bar, Amos Mootoo pledged his sup­port for Ma­haraj but said he would have pre­ferred if Grif­fith was by his side rather than against him. He be­lieves UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made a po­lit­i­cal mis­cal­cu­la­tion.

“I like Gary Grif­fith but I feel Kam­la and them sup­posed to em­brace every­body to push for­ward. Mick­ela and all of them sup­posed to come on board,” he said.

“With that frag­men­ta­tion, we can­not reach any­where. Kam­la and them need to re­think and re­con­sid­er get­ting every­body on board. In­clud­ing Rush­ton Paray. A guy who I knew, his roof blew off in Ma­yaro and I called Rusthon Paray and he was so prompt in giv­ing the man as­sis­tance. And I felt so proud.”

Bar own­er Bob­bin Singh said he’s not hap­py with the fre­quen­cy of Deyals­ingh’s vis­its in Aranguez.

“It take four years to see Deyals­ingh, I know we will see him just now again be­cause it’s elec­tion time,” Singh said.

How­ev­er, he ac­knowl­edged that Ma­haraj will not have an easy time to claim the seat.

Con­stituents on crime

While con­stituents said crime is a prob­lem, they un­der­stood it’s not ex­clu­sive to St Joseph and did not blame Deyals­ingh for the is­sue.

How­ev­er, Aranguez is home to sev­er­al farm­ers and with prae­di­al lar­ce­ny still a main prob­lem, they be­lieve who­ev­er is their rep­re­sen­ta­tive come April 29, that should be one of the first is­sues they ad­dress.

Bharath Sa­roop, whose son is a farmer, said farm­ers are giv­ing up the trade and the fer­tile Aranguez soil is be­com­ing the foun­da­tion for high-rise apart­ment build­ings.

“If you can’t se­cure a watch­man, the next own­er com­ing for your crops. A man said it’s bet­ter he builds a house and rents it out than to plant some­thing and peo­ple steal it,” he said.

This view was echoed by farmer Bharath Ram­per­sad.

As he laid fresh­ly har­vest­ed sweet pep­pers in a bas­ket, Ram­per­sad said: “At one time we were the food bas­ket but right now we seem to be the best hous­ing de­vel­op­ment.”

The 59-year-old said he has stared down the bar­rel of a gun while try­ing to earn an hon­est liv­ing.

“I was held at gun­point out­side my gate. Even leav­ing your home to go in the mar­ket is a chal­lenge be­cause there are in­suf­fi­cient po­lice pa­trols, es­pe­cial­ly here be­ing an agri­cul­tur­al area,” he said.

Ram­per­sad ex­pressed his dis­plea­sure with Deyals­ingh’s han­dling of the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty but had a warn­ing for any­one seek­ing their vote.

“You all bet­ter get your act to­geth­er, be­cause if Tri­nis de­cide to put coun­try be­fore par­ty, their turn won’t be long.”