KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Even as Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) sup­port­ers clashed in a bat­tle of al­le­giance along the South­ern Main Road in Point Fortin, both can­di­dates—Kennedy Richards Jr and Ernesto Ke­sar—voiced un­wa­ver­ing con­fi­dence in their bid to rep­re­sent the once oil-rich con­stituen­cy fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

While Richards Jr and Ke­sar were op­ti­mistic, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) can­di­date Er­rol Fabi­an and All Peo­ple’s Par­ty’s (APPTT) Shel­don Khan were de­ter­mined to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo.

Af­ter sub­mit­ting his nom­i­na­tion, Ke­sar de­clared that April 29 would be “Free­dom Day”. Crit­i­cis­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s an­nounce­ment that in­com­ing re­fin­ery op­er­a­tor Oan­do PLC would re­hire work­ers ter­mi­nat­ed in 2018, Ke­sar ques­tioned the ini­tial dis­missals and called on Young to dis­close de­tails of the agree­ment with Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Ltd.

“The pub­lic wants to know be­cause it can­not be that for the last sev­en years, you shut down the re­fin­ery, dec­i­mat­ed work­ers, de­stroyed the for­eign ex­change in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and you are now about to give the re­fin­ery to a com­pa­ny that has woe­ful and very in­ter­est­ing and strange fi­nan­cial mis­giv­ings. We want to know. The pub­lic wants to know,” Ke­sar said.

Urg­ing con­stituents to make his­to­ry by elect­ing him, Ke­sar lament­ed Point Fortin’s high un­em­ploy­ment lev­els and claimed the bor­ough’s ma­jor de­vel­op­ment—the Archibald-De Leon High­way and Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal—was ini­ti­at­ed un­der the UNC.

Mean­while, Fabi­an en­cour­aged vot­ers to em­brace change. Plan­ning to meet con­stituents at the Point Fortin Mar­ket on Sat­ur­day, Fabi­an said he would dis­trib­ute plants and fly­ers to en­gage res­i­dents.

“It is not an easy elec­tion. There ap­pears to be a lot of dis­con­tent with the rul­ing par­ty. But there is a lot of noise made by the Op­po­si­tion, as you can hear right now. I am try­ing to come down the mid­dle and tell peo­ple, ‘Hold on, you do not owe your vote to any­body. Think about it. Choose a can­di­date with re­spect to a di­rec­tion you would like to see your con­stituen­cy move in and then vote.’” Fabi­an said.

APP’s Khan, a busi­ness­man, said he had long sup­port­ed com­mu­ni­ties through do­na­tions and ad­vo­ca­cy.

“I de­cid­ed to get in­volved. In­stead of us­ing my mon­ey, I might as well use the gov­ern­ment mon­ey to try and help the same peo­ple I nor­mal­ly take my mon­ey to help,” Khan said.

Seek­ing a third term as MP, Richards Jr de­fend­ed his record, stat­ing that he had de­liv­ered dur­ing his tenure and was un­con­cerned about his com­peti­tors.

“Some­body is go­ing to lose their de­posit,” he quipped.

He as­sured on­go­ing and new projects would gen­er­ate jobs and de­fend­ed the con­struc­tion of the high­way.

“I work out of Point (Fortin), and a lot of peo­ple have been us­ing that high­way and are say­ing, ‘Lis­ten, Kennedy, that is the great­est thing that hap­pened to Point Fortin. I am reach­ing Point Fortin in no time.’ It is 25 min­utes from San Fer­nan­do, and you see the work that is on­go­ing. We have one area that is in­com­plete, and that is where we cross the pipeline, and we need to get per­mis­sion from Shell to cross the pipeline,” Richards said.