Renu­ka Singh

For­mer lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al foot­baller David Nahkid yes­ter­day blast­ed the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) for what he sees as its poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the peo­ple of Tu­na­puna over the past 43 years.

"The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment al­ways say 'great is the PNM and nev­er great is T&T. You re­alise that? They have al­ways been more about par­ty than peo­ple," Nahkid said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

"Forty-three years out of 58 years, this is a PNM gov­ern­ment, now and be­fore that has nev­er sought to up­lift the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty out of that race di­vi­sion," Nahkid said.

The out­spo­ken Nahkid was se­lect­ed to con­test the Tu­na­puna seat by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC).

Nahkid said that in Tu­na­puna, the peo­ple faced a lack of food se­cu­ri­ty and a lack of op­por­tu­ni­ty and he blamed the PNM.

The UNC won the mar­gin­al seat twice in the past 20 years, in 2000 Mervyn As­sam won the seat for the UNC and in 2010 when the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) won the Gen­er­al Elec­tions, Win­ston Dook­er­an won the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy for the PP.

Nahkid said he de­cid­ed to en­ter the race af­ter watch­ing what was hap­pen­ing in the coun­try.

"I felt that it was time to not on­ly write about it and speak about it but to do some­thing about it," he said.

He said that Tu­na­puna was "im­mense­ly un­der-rep­re­sent­ed".

"When you pass through the con­stituen­cy of Tu­na­puna you can very much feel like it was 30 years ago, noth­ing has changed. The traf­fic is worse, the con­di­tions at the mar­ket is the same, the roads are ter­ri­ble, no wa­ter, Cau­ra hos­pi­tal same," he said.

He said the ne­glect was not all the fault of the cur­rent Mem­ber for Par­lia­ment, Es­mond Forde.

"The PNM won there com­fort­ably in the last elec­tions and they left the rep­re­sen­ta­tive with­out any kind of re­sources to serve the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

"They tru­ly be­lieve with their ar­ro­gance that they can do noth­ing for that com­mu­ni­ty and just hope that by play­ing the race card, they re­ly on the African vote," he said.

"Oth­er than the Tu­na­puna po­lice sta­tion name one thing that you know about Tu­na­puna," he asked.

"There is a lot of dirty look­ing shops and in­fra­struc­ture," he said.

"You nev­er feel good pass­ing through Tu­na­puna, not like how you feel when you pass through Diego Mar­tin or San­ta Cruz, some of the com­mu­ni­ties that have re­sources al­lo­cat­ed to it," Nahkid said.

Speak­ing on the is­sue of race pol­i­tics, Nahkid said the PNM does not rep­re­sent the eth­nic­i­ty of the T&T peo­ple.

"Look at the PNM now, no min­is­ters rep­re­sent­ing the African iden­ti­ty, a cou­ple East In­di­ans for cos­met­ics and win­dow dress­ing but most of the re­sources have been di­rect­ed to­wards the one per cent and to­wards the peo­ple that are in pow­er and cor­rupt with it," he said.

Back in 2005 Nahkid made some­what dis­parag­ing com­ments about the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty in T&T. Those state­ments were re­port­ed to be racial­ly charged.

At that time the ad­vi­sor to T&T Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Jack Warn­er is­sued a state­ment dis­tanc­ing him­self and the group from Nahkid's state­ment.

Fif­teen years lat­er, Nahkid is un­apolo­getic.

"Let's be clear, there is no race called the Syr­i­an, that's one. That makes no sense," he said.

"I did not make racist com­ments against the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty, I made state­ments against cer­tain el­e­ments in the Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ty," he said.

Nahkid said that be­cause the Gov­ern­ment has failed to lift peo­ple out of pover­ty, some dis­en­fran­chised youths turned to sell­ing drugs.

"That has fu­eled a lot of the killings in the East/West cor­ri­dor and who has fa­cil­i­tat­ed that? The PNM gov­ern­ment by not giv­ing enough re­sources along the East/West cor­ri­dor," he said.

"Peo­ple feel they have no hope so they go for things that bring them quick mon­ey," he said.

He said that by ac­cept­ing him as a can­di­date, the UNC has demon­strat­ed that they are ready for that fight.

"When you have a can­di­date like David Nahkid, you know there's go­ing to be fire," he said.

Guardian Me­dia called and mes­saged cur­rent MP for the area, Es­mond Forde for com­ment on Nahkid's se­lec­tion but he did not re­spond.