Shas­tri Boodan

Guardian Me­dia Cor­re­spon­dent

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is hop­ing that the wid­ow of one of the divers in the Paria tragedy would take home a mar­gin­al seat in the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) in the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions.

Vanes­sa Kussie, 48, shot in­to the spot­light when her hus­band, Rishi Nages­sar, and four of his LM­CS col­leagues were sucked in­to a 30-inch un­der­wa­ter pipeline at the No 36 Sealine ris­er on Berth #6 at Paria Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, Pointe-a-Pierre, on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022.

Kussie and the oth­er fam­i­lies re­mained in the na­tion­al spot­light for months af­ter the un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance ex­er­cise took a dead­ly turn.

Div­er Christo­pher Boodram was res­cued short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2022. The bod­ies of Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr and Yusuf Hen­ry were re­cov­ered on Feb­ru­ary 28, 2022. Nages­sar’s body was found ear­ly on March 3, 2022. A Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was launched in­to the tragedy. The COE Chair­man was Jerome Lynch, KC.

The moth­er of three sons—in­clud­ing a four-year-old child with Nages­sar—showed up with an en­tourage of UNC sup­port­ers to file her nom­i­na­tion pa­per for the seat of Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um yes­ter­day.

Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia is one of the new seats cre­at­ed by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) in the CT­TRC. The area has one of two mar­gin­al seats, the oth­er be­ing Savonet­ta/Point Lisas.

Kussie, who said she wants to make “changes for my com­mu­ni­ty,” added that she of­fered her­self for elec­tion be­cause she be­lieves she would be the one to win the seat for her po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. “I be­lieve in woman pow­er. I be­lieve what I have gone through, what I have been through for these 16 months. I be­lieve that I can make a big change for our par­ty,” Kussie said.

Ac­cord­ing to Kussie, she has been an ac­tive mem­ber of the UNC for the past 23 years and of­fi­cial­ly joined the par­ty ten years ago.

She was the sec­re­tary of the UNC’s St An­drews Street, Car­li Bay Road par­ty group. Kussie said she has nev­er con­test­ed any po­si­tions for the par­ty’s ex­ec­u­tive. How­ev­er, her pa­ter­nal un­cle Alan “Taxi” Seep­er­sad was the coun­cil­lor for Fe­lic­i­ty/Cal­cut­ta/McBean on the CT­TRC. Seep­er­sad’s seat was split by the EBC and Cal­cut­ta 3/Mc Bean and Cou­va West/Roys­to­nia seats were cre­at­ed with the lat­ter be­ing a new seat.

Kussie plans to cam­paign on uni­ty and peo­ple pow­er in the com­ing weeks.

The wid­ow said her fam­i­ly was sur­prised when she an­nounced her po­lit­i­cal in­ten­tions, but they are will­ing to work with her on this cam­paign. “I have the full sup­port of my fam­i­ly and friends and peo­ple of my neigh­bour­hood. Every­body knows I am go­ing to be the can­di­date.”

Kussie said the com­mu­ni­ty has a lot of is­sues to be re­solved. When asked what she plans to do if faced with a lack of re­sources, she said, “We will work to­wards that when that time reach­es.”

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh said Kussie has been a com­mit­ted mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty. “She has con­fi­dence in the lead­er­ship of Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the vi­sion of the UNC and what we have to of­fer the coun­try from a lo­cal gov­ern­ment point of view.”

In­dars­ingh said res­i­dents of the Roys­to­nia/Cou­va West area were faced with bad roads, drainage and crime be­cause of the fail­ure of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to re­lease funds to the CT­TRC to up­lift the com­mu­ni­ty.

Kussie goes up against Lynise Bur­nett-Pack­ette of the PNM who was the first to file nom­i­na­tion pa­pers. Bur­nett-Pack­ette ar­rived with scores of PNM sup­port­ers who es­cort­ed her with the sounds of African drums. Bur­nett-Pack­ett said she was con­fi­dent of win­ning.

Coun­cil­lor pre­dicts PNM

to get 4 CT­TRC seats

Mean­while, Ar­lene Solomon-Rame­sar of the UNC will be go­ing up against Shar­da Satram of the PNM for the Cou­va East/Bal­main seat. Solomon-Rame­sar said this would be her fourth time at the polls. She said one of the biggest chal­lenges was fund­ing as the PNM Gov­ern­ment failed to re­lease funds to the CT­TRC.

How­ev­er, the par­ty sought al­ter­na­tive ways to as­sist the com­mu­ni­ty. “We have not been de­pend­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to serve our burgess­es.”

Satram con­test­ed the last gen­er­al elec­tion for the seat of Cou­va North. Satram, 32, a con­trac­tor who is al­so a cul­tur­al and so­cial ac­tivist, said she was con­fi­dent to get the Bal­main seat for the PNM.

Ra­jen­dra Go­sine, the PNM’s can­di­date for Savonet­ta/Point Lisas goes up against the in­cum­bent Ram­c­hand Ra­jbal Maraj of the UNC.

Go­sine said, “Ra­jbal has out­lived that use­ful­ness as a coun­cil­lor. I be­lieve that I have the op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause my par­ty is in gov­ern­ment and that would give me that ad­van­tage.”

Go­sine, who is no new­com­er to pol­i­tics, said he was ex­pect­ing the PNM to get four seats on the CT­TRC. He said the fil­ing process was sim­ple.  

Maraj, mean­while, said he was con­fi­dent of win­ning now that he knows who he is com­ing up against. He said the CT­TRC has been starved of re­sources while a num­ber of is­sues such as crime and un­em­ploy­ment are not be­ing ad­dressed.