Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

At the age of 103, Leonard Lessey has vot­ed in all 18 gen­er­al elec­tions this coun­try has ever had and plans to con­tin­ue on April 28.

The Trou Macaque, Laven­tille res­i­dent, who mi­grat­ed from Grena­da in April 1942, is set to cast his vote at the Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary School on Mon­day.

And al­though he’s yet to re­ceive his polling card, Lessey wants to not on­ly be one of the old­est to “dip his fin­ger in ink” on elec­tion day but one of the first to do so.

“If pos­si­ble, we will be there ear­ly in the morn­ing,” he said yes­ter­day.

Lessey, who tunes in to the night­ly po­lit­i­cal meet­ings when he can, not­ed the im­por­tance of a gen­er­al elec­tion and cit­i­zens’ par­tic­i­pa­tion, es­pe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion.

“No mat­ter what you do, some­body have to run the coun­try, and you have to vote to get the amount of who will run the coun­try, so elec­tions must take place in every­thing, I think. Elec­tion must take place,” he said.

Dis­ap­point­ed with the cur­rent so­cial and eco­nom­ic cli­mate, Lessey de­scribed Trinidad and To­ba­go as a nice place, but said peo­ple had made it bad.

“You have plen­ty wicked­ness in this place here. The young peo­ple that play­ing ban­dit and get­ting on bad ... get a crew of all yuh and do some agri­cul­ture. In­stead of be­hav­ing bad and try­ing to kill one an­oth­er, do some agri­cul­ture, plant food. Is food and mon­ey,” he said.

Lessey said af­ter he sup­port­ed Uri­ah But­ler in the 1956 elec­tion, he moved over to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment and has not switched since.

“The first time that Er­ic Williams win elec­tion (1956) I didn’t vote for him; I was with (trade union leader) Uri­ah But­ler. I was in his par­ty at those days,” Lessey said.

“But when he made the first year (Er­ic Williams), I de­cid­ed, well But­ler come and get kind of sick and so on, and I de­cid­ed to move over with Er­ic Williams, PNM, and from then, is PNM I mov­ing on with,” he re­called.

He said he had hope in the re­cent­ly ap­point­ed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and the PNM’s prospec­tive can­di­date for his con­stituen­cy of Laven­tille West, Ka­reem Mar­celle.

“This young man that de­cide to take over, I don’t know, he talk­ing like he have a po­ten­tial. He have a good mind, that he will try to help Trinidad. I hop­ing that the way he talk he will con­tin­ue try­ing to help the peo­ple,” he said.

How­ev­er, for the politi­cians vy­ing for lead­er­ship on Mon­day, Lessey ad­vised who­ev­er wins to re­mem­ber those who put them in of­fice.

“But some­times when you want to get some­thing you bring down heav­en on earth, and when you reach heav­en, you for­get who’s be­hind. Let every­body be hap­py,” he said.

Lessey’s 104th birth­day is on Oc­to­ber 18.