Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy po­lit­i­cal leader David Lee has de­clared him­self “the re­al Chi­nee”, de­scrib­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s po­lit­i­cal record as a fail­ure, just days be­fore Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Speak­ing at the UNC’s pub­lic meet­ing at St John Am­bu­lance Hall, Port-of-Spain, on Wednes­day night, Lee took aim at Young’s re­cent cam­paign state­ments, es­pe­cial­ly on pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions. Lee said he thought Chi­nese peo­ple could count, and so could he. He re­called watch­ing a plat­form speech in which Young claimed that while the UNC and its Coali­tion of In­ter­ests pro­posed start­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) would start at five per cent.

He said his 92-year-old moth­er had seen the video and asked whether he had heard what Young said. “I al­ways thought 10 per cent was high­er than 5 per cent. I do not know where Stu­art Young, in his maths, is say­ing that 5 per cent is bet­ter than 10 per cent,” Lee said.

He added that he had every right to speak about Young, stat­ing he was the re­al “Chi­nee.”

“I do not know about Stu­art Young, what genes he has, what race he has, but I am the re­al deal.”

Lee ex­pressed dis­com­fort with Young’s el­e­va­tion to Prime Min­is­ter, even tem­porar­i­ly. Re­fer­ring to the dis­play of for­mer and cur­rent prime min­is­ters at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, which in­cludes their dates in of­fice, he said what for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had left be­hind would be an im­age of Young la­belled: “Prime Min­is­ter from March 17, 2025, to April 28, 2025” — a mere 43 days.

Lee crit­i­cised Young’s per­for­mance in gov­ern­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy port­fo­lios. He claimed the PNM was at­tempt­ing to rewrite the nar­ra­tive, say­ing peo­ple should for­get Young’s track record be­cause the par­ty was “start­ing a new chap­ter”.

Lee claimed over the past ten years, the PNM has bro­ken the econ­o­my, crashed pub­lic ser­vices, and treat­ed na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions with dis­dain. He said the par­ty was now try­ing to dis­tract cit­i­zens from its fail­ures by re­peat­ing decade-old pro­pa­gan­da.

He urged vot­ers not to for­get the sev­en fu­el price in­creas­es and a mere four per cent wage hike.

Re­it­er­at­ing the UNC’s pro­pos­als, Lee said Port-of-Spain and the wider coun­try would ben­e­fit un­der a UNC-led gov­ern­ment from stronger noise pol­lu­tion laws in res­i­den­tial ar­eas, doc­tor home vis­its, 24/7 health cen­tres, Com­mu­ni­ty Com­fort Pa­trols, faster busi­ness ap­provals, low­er cor­po­rate tax­es, free stu­dent lap­tops, ex­pand­ed GATE and schol­ar­ship pro­grammes, and safer schools.

He warned that Row­ley and Young did not want those things for the peo­ple.

“They spent over $600 bil­lion over the last 10 years — and what did cit­i­zens get for it?”

As a can­di­date for Ca­roni Cen­tral, Lee shared the con­cerns he had heard while vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly about wa­ter scarci­ty.

“Could you imag­ine, twice a month you get wa­ter? How could you live — and you are ask­ing over 31,000 in the con­stituen­cy of Ca­roni Cen­tral to live on twice a month of wa­ter? That is a tragedy. That is heart­less­ness.”

He said for­mer Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh re­cent­ly told him that con­stituents were fac­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion in wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion.

“That was pure wicked­ness by this PNM gov­ern­ment. That is ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion.”

Lee promised im­proved wa­ter sup­ply if the UNC re­turned to gov­ern­ment and chal­lenged vot­ers to think ahead.

“Imag­ine what the PNM would do to them for an­oth­er five years, should the elec­torate re-elect them.”