RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

As the April 28 elec­tions draw near­er, the Leader of the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV) par­ty, Fuad Abu Bakr, son of the late 1990 in­sur­rec­tion­ist Yasin Abu Bakr, has pub­licly en­dorsed the UNC as the par­ty of­fer­ing the best hope for poor and dis­en­fran­chised cit­i­zens.

Abu Bakr and mem­bers of his NNV par­ty, in­clud­ing Za­wa­di Abu Bakr and Jarlisa Gor­don, were seen at­tend­ing the UNC meet­ing at Bhups­ingh Park, Pe­nal in the con­stituen­cy of Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Mon­day night.

In an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with CNC3 News, Abu Bakr said his pres­ence was dri­ven by a de­sire to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to make in­formed de­ci­sions.

“I have been to a cou­ple of UNC meet­ings be­fore,” he said. “I am a cit­i­zen of T&T, and I want to speak to cit­i­zens. We all have the right to sup­port and lis­ten to every­one who is pre­sent­ing them­selves for po­lit­i­cal of­fice, and you should not lim­it your­self.”

He em­pha­sized that vot­ers should eval­u­ate can­di­dates on their own mer­it rather than re­ly on hearsay or po­lit­i­cal tra­di­tion.

“Give your­self the op­por­tu­ni­ty to hear from peo­ple so you can make an in­formed choice for your­self,” Abu Bakr urged. “Don’t wait for some­one to tell you about Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar — take it from the horse’s mouth. If you can come to a meet­ing just to fig­ure things out, do that, be­cause then you will see first­hand. And like­wise, go to a PNM meet­ing, lis­ten to Stu­art, and see what’s go­ing on for your­self.”

Al­though the NNV is con­test­ing on­ly the Port of Spain South seat, Abu Bakr ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er par­ties if he se­cures a vic­to­ry.

“At the mo­ment, I still have my own par­ty con­test­ing the Port of Spain South seat,” he said. “What’s left are 40 oth­er con­stituen­cies where I look to see who is pre­sent­ing. Even if I win my one seat — which I’m hop­ing I will — I will still have to work with oth­ers. It is es­sen­tial for me to re­al­ly de­ci­pher the big­ger pic­ture.”

Call­ing at­ten­tion to the lived ex­pe­ri­ences of peo­ple in un­der­de­vel­oped ar­eas, Abu Bakr made a pas­sion­ate ap­peal for cit­i­zens to choose gov­er­nance based on com­pas­sion and com­pe­tence.

“Wher­ev­er work­ing-class peo­ple are, I will be there. Wher­ev­er poor, dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple have the best chance, I will be there. And wher­ev­er there is a car­ing gov­ern­ment, I will be there,” he de­clared. “I un­der­stand what’s go­ing on. I have seen the tenures of oth­er ad­min­is­tra­tions, and they leave a lot to be de­sired. I’m putting it mild­ly.”

He not­ed that while no ad­min­is­tra­tion is per­fect, the goal should be to sup­port poli­cies that ben­e­fit the ma­jor­i­ty.

“I want what’s best for T&T. Things will not be per­fect, but we have to look and see who is do­ing the best for the ma­jor­i­ty — the 99 per­cent — and then you will ben­e­fit,” he said.

Abu Bakr al­so re­act­ed to the ap­pear­ance of John Je­re­mie on the UNC plat­form.

“See­ing Je­re­mie on stage was a lit­tle bit of a sur­prise,” he ad­mit­ted. “There is dis­af­fec­tion on both sides, and some of what he’s say­ing is true.”

Abu Bakr was sharply crit­i­cal of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion in his own PNM-strong­hold con­stituen­cy.

“I come from a con­stituen­cy that is pre­dom­i­nant­ly PNM, and it is ab­solute­ly de­prived and ne­glect­ed. Kei­th Scot­land is one of the worst MPs in T&T — ever,” he said.

Dis­pelling eth­nic and racial stereo­types of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with par­ty pol­i­tics he ad­mit­ted to at­tend­ing oth­er UNC meet­ings on the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

"There are so many Afro-Tri­nis in­volved in the UNC. When I went to the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence, the ma­jor­i­ty were Afro-Trinida­di­ans,” he said. Mean­while, Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Cud­joe al­so threw sup­port for the UNC and Je­re­mie.

"Je­re­mie is the best At­tor­ney Gen­er­al this coun­try has ever seen and I am hap­py he is mak­ing the right move by en­dors­ing the UNC. The PNM has failed us. We have to make a change and get rid of PNM. We need jobs for our peo­ple and ed­u­ca­tion. That is the key," he said.

He not­ed that it was time for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to take so­ci­ety to high­er heights of moral­i­ty, in­tel­lec­tu­al hon­esty and be­ing faith­ful to the peo­ple on the ground rather than to serve the elites.