The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s can­di­date for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Fos­ter Cum­mings is call­ing for a clean elec­tion cam­paign af­ter one of his bill­boards in La Hor­quet­ta was de­stroyed.

The bill­board stands at the end of La Hor­quet­ta Boule­vard in Phase 10. Some­time be­tween Thurs­day night and Fri­day morn­ing peo­ple no­ticed it was torn. By morn­ing it had been ripped al­most all the way off the stand. 

Cum­mings him­self alert­ed the pub­lic to the in­ci­dent post­ing on Face­book, “Van­dal­iz­ing my bill­board will not stop the re­sound­ing vic­to­ry for the PNM in La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro and across the na­tion!  Let’s keep this cam­paign clean, fo­cused, and strong.”

Speak­ing im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers yes­ter­day, Cum­mings sent a mes­sage to the van­dals say­ing, “This is Trinidad and To­ba­go where we have free and fair elec­tions and peo­ple are al­lowed to ex­press their po­lit­i­cal views with­out let or hin­drance.”

Cum­mings said even though he was in no way blam­ing his Unit­ed Na­tion­al op­po­nent Phillip Watts, who was once his con­stituen­cy of­fice chair­man, he said he asked him to run a clean cam­paign. 

“I said to him ear­li­er on, ‘let us run a clean cam­paign. Let us make sure we give our sup­port­ers the right ad­vice on how they should take part in the elec­tion’ and he agreed,” Cum­mings said.  

He re­called the 2020 cam­paign against Jear­lean John (now con­test­ing Cou­va North for the UNC) was “very clean” and “with­out blem­ish” where no­body at­tacked any­one and sup­port­ers were re­spect­ful to each oth­er.

Watts agreed there would be no an­i­mos­i­ty on the hus­tings. 

“In the UNC camp, we have a lot of or­der and love. We don’t have time for fight­ing, bick­er­ing and con­fu­sion. We are very fo­cused in the UNC camp. We have an elec­tion to win and we are well on the way to do­ing that.” 

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, chair­man of the Coun­cil of Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour for com­ment. He said the coun­cil will next meet on Wednes­day where the in­ci­dent will be a top­ic of dis­cus­sion. 

— Ke­jan Haynes