Shas­tri Boodan

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date for Cou­va South, Bar­ry Padarath, was warm­ly re­ceived dur­ing his first of­fi­cial walk­a­bout in the con­stituen­cy on Mon­day, fol­low­ing his se­lec­tion as the par­ty’s can­di­date for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Padarath re­places out­go­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudranath In­dars­ingh, whose name was not in­clud­ed on the UNC’s fi­nal slate of can­di­dates an­nounced last Thurs­day. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia in the Cal­i­for­nia dis­trict, Padarath said he was en­cour­aged by the warm re­cep­tion from res­i­dents and con­firmed he had the full back­ing of the UNC’s Cou­va South ex­ec­u­tive.

“The peo­ple em­braced me whole­heart­ed­ly,” Padarath said. “They un­der­stand the chal­lenges they’ve faced over the past decade and they are ready for change.”

He crit­i­cised re­cent road paving ef­forts in the area, dis­miss­ing them as an elec­tion ploy. “For the last 10 years, the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­ceived noth­ing from the PNM but pain and suf­fer­ing,” Padarath said. “Whether they pave in 10 days or 10 weeks, it won’t make a dif­fer­ence. These last-minute ‘ma­m­aguy’ tac­tics won’t work any­more.”

Padarath al­so weighed in on the re­cent court rul­ing in favour of UNC can­di­date David Lee, who had faced le­gal chal­lenges. “We are ec­sta­t­ic, but not sur­prised,” he said. “From the be­gin­ning, we knew this was a con­coct­ed ef­fort by the PNM. When­ev­er their po­lit­i­cal back is against the wall, they re­sort to these tac­tics.”

He ac­cused the rul­ing par­ty of us­ing the le­gal sys­tem as a po­lit­i­cal tool. “The PNM con­tin­ues to use the heavy hand of the law to se­cure an elec­toral ad­van­tage,” he said. “But the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go are no longer buy­ing it. The en­tire coun­try is sim­ply wait­ing to ex­hale — wait­ing to see the backs of Stu­art Young and the PNM.”