The mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro is one of the largest of the 41 con­stituen­cies.

On the ur­ban side, it in­cludes com­mu­ni­ties such as La Hor­quet­ta, Green­vale and Waller­field, while Brazil Vil­lage, San Raphael, Tal­paro, Mun­do Nue­vo, Las Lo­mas, Todd’s Road and Mamoral make up the rur­al side of the con­stituen­cy.

There are four po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing this con­stituen­cy - the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) - Fos­ter Cum­mings, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) - Phillip Watts, Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF) - Rekeisha Fran­cois and Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) - Alvin Cud­joe.

In 2020, Cum­mings, the out­go­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, won the seat by 1923 votes edg­ing out UNC’s deputy leader Jear­lean John.

How­ev­er, this time around, con­stituents say the re­sults could swing ei­ther way.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the con­stituen­cy, bill­boards, posters and pho­tos of Cum­mings were plas­tered every­where.

There were al­so many homes in La Hor­quet­ta and Green­vale dec­o­rat­ed in PNM para­pher­na­lia, ev­i­dence that Cum­mings had sup­port on the ur­ban side.

La Hor­quet­ta res­i­dent Shur­land Pe­ru said, “La Hor­quet­ta is a PNM strong­hold. I ain’t afraid to tell you. La Hor­quet­ta is a strong­hold for the PNM.”

Green­vale res­i­dent Georgelle Scott said, “He is an MP that has been work­ing. Once every­body votes smart and come out and do what needs to be done, I don’t see our MP go­ing any­where, any­time soon.”

An­oth­er Green­vale res­i­dent, Thad­deus Saradal­lo, said, “I be­lieve every­one who has the in­ter­est of the com­mu­ni­ties at heart and who does stuff de­serves five years. So to say Cum­mings de­serves an­oth­er five years, I would say yes. But, I’ll al­so prob­a­bly say yes to Phillip Watts too.”

But, de­spite the mas­sive-sized paid po­lit­i­cal ads and cam­paign sub-of­fices in La Hor­quet­ta, dis­tressed Ram­jat­tan Trace res­i­dents claimed Cum­mings has rarely ever been seen in per­son.

Alana Ser­rette, who was among dozens who said they begged the MP to as­sist af­ter their homes were de­mol­ished back in Feb­ru­ary, said she’s yet to re­ceive any help.

“He ain’t even show he face in­side here since all of this hap­pened. I don’t want no part of that par­ty. You see PNM, I am very sor­ry but not me. Watch how much mon­ey you spend out there to do that (cam­paign of­fice) and we in­side here, watch what we have to live in,” said Ser­rette.

Mean­while, Watts – the PNM’s for­mer con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro for 14 years - said his in­side knowl­edge of PNM’s strengths and weak­ness­es is what will make him win.

He served un­der for­mer PNM MP Max­ie Cuffie and al­so Cum­mings.

Watts said, “The minute they ac­tu­al­ly an­nounced me as a can­di­date, I start­ed get­ting a lot of calls from the PNM peo­ple telling me that they are sup­port­ing me and I am speak­ing about peo­ple who sit on the PNM’s con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. So, the PNM and Fos­ter Cum­mings are in a lot of trou­ble in this elec­tion. I would have been the cam­paign man­ag­er for (for­mer La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP) Max­ie Cuffie. I would have been the cam­paign man­ag­er for Fos­ter Cum­mings. I would have al­so been the chair­man for the con­stituen­cy from 2010 to 2022. I ac­tu­al­ly was the strate­gist for the PNM in this con­stituen­cy. I hand-stitched this con­stituen­cy, and I know ex­act­ly where to rip the stitch­es, and I’m go­ing to rip it in La Hor­quet­ta, Green­vale and Waller­field.”

How­ev­er, Cum­mings isn’t fazed by his com­pe­ti­tion.

Re­spond­ing to Watts yes­ter­day, he said, “The strat­e­gy we used in 2020 is cer­tain­ly not the strat­e­gy that we use in 2025, so if he pro­pos­es to go that route, he will glad­ly ac­cept sec­ond place in this race.”

Weigh­ing in on the is­sues, PF’s Fran­cois claimed the rur­al parts of the con­stituen­cy have been ne­glect­ed for far too long and that’s where the third par­ty has been fo­cus­ing.

When it comes to the rur­al parts of the con­stituen­cy such as Mun­do Nue­vo, Fran­cois said is­sues such as bad roads and lack of wa­ter have been ig­nored for far too long.

Fran­cois said, “La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro is not on­ly La Hor­quet­ta and I’ve been say­ing that. La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro con­sists of all the com­mu­ni­ties and I be­lieve that all of them de­serve the same type of love and at­ten­tion... Garbage trucks don’t reach up be­cause the roads are ter­ri­ble. The last time they had wa­ter was June last year. The school has been closed for five years. A lot of is­sues that are not be­ing ad­dressed.”

Res­i­dent: I vot­ing

for change

Res­i­dents of Tal­paro and Todd’s Road al­so agree. They spoke about a lack of wa­ter and ter­ri­ble roads as ma­jor is­sues.

One Tal­paro res­i­dent Tracey Mon­segue said, “One of my is­sues in Tal­paro right now is the roads. As you all can clear­ly see how bad the road is in front of my busi­ness place on the Mun­do Nue­vo Road. They start­ed do­ing stuff and nev­er com­plet­ed it. When rain falls it’s re­al­ly bad.”

An­oth­er Tal­paro res­i­dent Bernard Padil­la said, “We have re­al is­sues up here. Since about sev­en years now, they grade a piece of road and bring equip­ment and do like they go­ing to pave it and af­ter elec­tion, they ain’t pave no road. They take up all the equip­ment and gone. You see the con­di­tions of the roads around here. It’s re­al dis­tress around here.”

Josi­ah Beck­les, a 20-year-old first-time vot­er, al­so from Tal­paro said, “Up here wa­ter is re­al prob­lems. You will have wa­ter for half an hour, for an hour then wa­ter gone. Wa­ter ain’t com­ing back for a week. You have to go fill this and fill that, and that get­ting re­al frus­trat­ing now. Watch my grand­moth­er. My grand­moth­er can’t be out here fulling wa­ter all the time. If I not here who go­ing to do it for she? So I vot­ing for change and when I vote, I’ll en­cour­age my brethrens to vote as well.”

Not shy­ing away from the is­sues at hand, Cum­mings said the roads will be fixed.

He said, “We have chal­lenges with the roads be­cause these ar­eas have fre­quent land­slips and there­fore, in dis­cus­sion with the Min­istry of Works, they want to fo­cus on re­pair­ing the land­slips be­fore they do the oth­er as­pects of the work. And, if you move around this con­stituen­cy, you see cur­rent­ly there are about three large projects be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry of Works re­pair­ing and putting in place road sta­bi­liza­tion is­sues. We have had many com­plet­ed be­fore, and we have had at least about three or four bridge con­struc­tion projects as well. Every­body would like to get every­thing done at the same time. It’s not pos­si­ble be­cause, of course, we have fi­nan­cial con­straints.”

As for Ram­jat­tan res­i­dents, he al­so as­sured help was on the way.

He added, “I don’t en­cour­age squat­ting what­so­ev­er. How­ev­er, what we have done is ask the wel­fare of­fi­cers to in­ter­view all the per­sons who are af­fect­ed at Ram­jatan Trace. Most of them are from out­side of the con­stituen­cy, I must tell you. But nonethe­less, I am MP for the area and I’ve asked them to talk with them to see what with­in the State sec­tor, in terms of the so­cial pro­grammes, that will be able to put some­thing in place for them and for their kids and they are cur­rent­ly go­ing through that process.”

Cum­mings was quite con­fi­dent that he would win the seat again, boast­ing of the many things he’s done for his con­stituen­cy over the past five years – in­clud­ing the La Hor­quet­ta Li­brary, Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, con­struc­tion of bridges and en­sur­ing flood vic­tims in Green­vale have no wa­ter is­sues.

Shar­ing plans for the next five years in of­fice, should he be re-elect­ed, Cum­mings said the PNM will be con­struct­ing a sec­ondary school in La Hor­quet­ta and more com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres in Ja­cob Hill and Green­vale are on the way.

“We are go­ing to win this con­stituen­cy, con­vinc­ing­ly so. As a mat­ter of fact, it is my in­ten­tion to in­crease the mar­gin of vic­to­ry,” Cum­mings said.

La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MPs

2020 - Present Fos­ter Cum­mings

2015 - 2020 PNM Max­ie Cuffie

2010 - 2015 UNC Jairam Seemu­n­gal

2007 - 2010 PNM Roger Joseph

Past gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults:

2020

PNM Fos­ter Cum­mings 9713

UNC Jear­lean John 7790

2015

PNM Max­ie Cuffie 10,428

UNC Jairam Seemu­n­gal 7606