Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

It doesn’t mat­ter to the Op­po­si­tion UNC who wants to leave the par­ty or join an­oth­er en­ti­ty, as there are hun­dreds more peo­ple who want to fill the po­si­tions left by those who ex­it, says UNC Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

Gopeesingh, who has shrugged off Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s pre­dic­tion of a “lick­ing” for the UNC in lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, has warned Row­ley not to bait the pop­u­la­tion.

Speak­ing at yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing at the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain, Gopeesingh called on Row­ley to call elec­tion be­cause he’s failed on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

“... And this is the per­son who’s com­ing to cit­i­zens, say­ing he wants to con­tin­ue run­ning T&T and re-elect them! You must tell him no! Make a strong state­ment, as he’s dam­aged this coun­try in every as­pect of life,” Gopeesingh de­clared.

Re­spond­ing to de­fec­tions to the PNM by UNC coun­cil­lors Shel­don Gar­cia, Samuel Sankar, Mar­cus Gird­harie, and youth of­fi­cer Kaveesh Siew­di­al, Gopeesingh said pol­i­tics has its ups and down and idio­syn­crasies, as well as the be­hav­iour of cer­tain peo­ple.

He said, “In every po­lit­i­cal par­ty, peo­ple may join one or­gan­i­sa­tion, then don’t want to stay there. They’re free to move as they want. There are many more who want to fill your po­si­tion if you want to move from A to B or B to A.

“But one thing: the UNC has strong mea­sures to de­ter­mine suit­abil­i­ty for gov­er­nance - and our par­ty has dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures.

“So, it doesn’t mat­ter to us who wants to move or go where, every­one’s en­ti­tled to their choice. But there are hun­dreds more who want to fill those po­si­tions.”

On the im­pact of Gird­harie’s de­par­ture on UNC’s tar­get­ing of the San Fer­nan­do cor­po­ra­tion, Gopeesingh said, “He’s free to leave. (Sat­ur­day) We screened hun­dreds up to 4 am (yes­ter­day).”

Gopeesingh de­clined to re­veal if the UNC has for­mer PN­Mites among its nom­i­nees, say­ing names are con­fi­den­tial un­til can­di­dates are an­nounced.

“We have very dis­tin­guished, dig­ni­fied, hard­work­ing qual­i­fied peo­ple who ap­plied to be coun­cil­lors and al­der­men—19 ap­pli­cants for al­der­men,” he said.

PM gets elec­tion warn­ing

On PM Row­ley’s “lick­ing” pre­dic­tion, Gopeesingh added, “Dr Row­ley un­der­es­ti­mates the peo­ple, they’ve had enough of him. You’re bait­ing the peo­ple in a dif­fer­ent way, Prime Min­is­ter, but don’t go down that way. You’re go­ing on plat­forms, sep­a­rat­ing this pop­u­la­tion; you’re be­ing very dirty and vi­cious in your ap­proach to gov­er­nance, try­ing to win an elec­tion.”

Gopeesingh warned cit­i­zens that the is­sue wasn’t what Row­ley was talk­ing about—eth­nic­i­ty etc—but is gov­er­nance .

He added, “Are you sat­is­fied he’s done what he’s sup­posed to do for T&T? He’s not go­ing to win! We’re go­ing to win this lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion and im­prove the num­ber of LG seats we have. And we’ll win the gen­er­al elec­tion when it’s called - peo­ple are fed-up, he’s brought T&T to its knees. They won’t vote for you, Prime Min­is­ter—you’ll be in shock.”

Pan­ning Row­ley’s re­cent com­ments on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, Gopeesingh added, “Apol­o­gise to the na­tion, re­sign and call an elec­tion now. Let the peo­ple de­cide if they want you, they must do deep in­tro­spec­tion of what has been giv­en to them.”

Gopeesingh al­so rub­bished Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi’s “you need cash to care” ra­tio­nale for the prop­er­ty tax.

Gopeesingh said, “The re­al key is run­ning T&T ef­fi­cient­ly. The peo­ple are over­taxed cur­rent­ly. UNC doesn’t sup­port prop­er­ty tax and the peo­ple don’t.”

MP Rishi Seecher­an mean­while said T&T is a na­tion in cri­sis, where every min­istry’s fail­ing the peo­ple.

“Af­ter an av­er­age $6 bil­lion spent in the Health Min­istry an­nu­al­ly, why are cit­i­zens un­able to ac­cess even an am­bu­lance or a doc­tor in an emer­gency? Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has to ac­count for his per­for­mance as his par­ty takes to the polls.”