Raphael John-Lall

The San Fer­nan­do East par­lia­men­tary con­stituen­cy has pro­duced one prime min­is­ter in T&T’s his­to­ry and this year again it may pos­si­bly pro­duce an­oth­er his­tor­i­cal mile­stone as the son of a for­mer prime min­is­ter could be­come the next MP.

Ran­dall Mitchell is the out­go­ing MP for San Fer­nan­do East. In 2015, Ran­dall re­placed the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning who had held the seat for 44 years.

In this year’s elec­tion, the con­stituen­cy will see Bri­an Man­ning, the son of the late Patrick Man­ning con­test­ing the seat on a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) tick­et, while Moni­fa Rus­sell An­drews is rep­re­sent­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Both can­di­dates spoke to the Guardian about how they in­tend to im­prove the con­stituen­cy if elect­ed.

PNM

Man­ning who has worked in an in­vest­ment an­a­lyst back­ground de­cid­ed to con­test the seat be­cause of the cur­rent prob­lems the coun­try faces.

He be­lieves that the coun­try is in a “frag­ile” sit­u­a­tion eco­nom­i­cal­ly and the de­ci­sions that are made now will de­ter­mine the coun­try’s fu­ture for gen­er­a­tions to come.

Giv­en the junc­ture that the coun­try is in now, ear­li­er this year he made the de­ci­sion to con­test the seat his fa­ther held for over 40 years.

He said the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy faces sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances as the rest of the coun­try.

Two of the ma­jor prob­lems his con­stituen­cy faces are un­em­ploy­ment and in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems.

He at­trib­ut­es the down­turn in the econ­o­my to a crash in en­er­gy prices and the COVID-19 re­lat­ed cri­sis and this has hurt busi­ness­es and peo­ple’s abil­i­ty to find jobs.

He al­so said that lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is crit­i­cal as that it was sup­posed to be fund­ed in part by Prop­er­ty Tax­es. This Prop­er­ty Tax im­ple­men­ta­tion has been made dif­fi­cult be­cause of the op­po­si­tion block­ing it.

To solve the un­em­ploy­ment in the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy and the coun­try in gen­er­al, Man­ning said that the right eco­nom­ic poli­cies must be im­ple­ment­ed to cre­ate jobs.

Man­ning who has been tour­ing the con­stituen­cy for the past six weeks said that the out­pour­ing of sup­port has been over­whelm­ing and he is con­fi­dent of a vic­to­ry.

Re­flect­ing on the lega­cy of his fa­ther, the younger Man­ning said his fa­ther helped the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do and the coun­try great­ly and he un­der­stands that he has big shoes to fill.

Monifa Russell Andrews

UNC

Moni­fa Rus­sell An­drews is the UNC’s can­di­date for the San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy.

A moth­er of three chil­dren, she is a small busi­ness own­er and she has been ac­tive in the po­lit­i­cal are­na and worked to help the par­ty to win the 2010 elec­tions.

She said it is very “sad” as the area has been ne­glect­ed by past MPs and it is ob­vi­ous for every­one to see.

Some of the prob­lems that she iden­ti­fied in­clude drainage, wa­ter, recre­ation, over­grown grass, mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion, lack of postal ser­vices and lack of main­te­nance of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) units.

If elect­ed, she will al­so work with the young peo­ple of the con­stituen­cy to im­prove their lives.

She al­so promis­es to en­sure that prop­er drains are built to ac­com­mo­date the flow of wa­ter and that all wa­ter canals are cleaned reg­u­lar­ly.

She will al­so en­sure that garbage is prop­er­ly dis­posed of.

An­drews will al­so lob­by with oth­er col­leagues hold­ing re­spec­tive min­istries to work to­geth­er to get the job done.