Kevon Felmine

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Coun­cil for Re­spon­si­ble Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour is urg­ing po­lit­i­cal par­ties and prospec­tive can­di­dates to re­frain from us­ing State re­sources as part of their cam­paigns. This comes af­ter the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh’s al­leged dis­tri­b­u­tion of Min­istry of Health (MoH) wa­ter bot­tles dur­ing his elec­tion walk­a­bouts.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) wrote to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Mon­day, stat­ing that it had learnt the bot­tles were part of an MoH TTMoves ini­tia­tive, with MPs be­ing al­lo­cat­ed 100 each. It ac­cused Deyals­ingh of “bla­tant at­tempt at elec­tion­eer­ing.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, coun­cil chair­man Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath stressed that State re­sources should not be used to the ad­van­tage of an in­cum­bent MP. How­ev­er, he not­ed that if the bot­tles were in­deed part of an MoH ini­tia­tive and used ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, there would be no eth­i­cal vi­o­la­tion.

Ra­goonath point­ed out that the Code of Eth­i­cal Po­lit­i­cal Be­hav­iour, which sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties pre­vi­ous­ly signed, in­cludes a clause pro­hibit­ing the use of pub­lic funds for ad­ver­tise­ments or cam­paign ma­te­ri­als.

“Now, I do not know who bore the cost of these bot­tles. Was it pub­lic mon­ey, or was it a pri­vate com­pa­ny do­na­tion? I do not know. But if it con­sti­tutes an ad­ver­tise­ment, the code specif­i­cal­ly speaks to that,” Ra­goonath said.

He added that if the bot­tles were dis­trib­uted with a card fea­tur­ing Deyals­ingh in his Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) jer­sey, this would fur­ther raise eth­i­cal con­cerns.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said if Deyals­ingh dis­trib­uted TT Moves bot­tles in St Joseph in his ca­pac­i­ty as the con­stituen­cy’s par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive, he would have been in er­ror.

PNM cam­paign man­ag­er

dis­miss­es claims

Deyals­ingh’s cam­paign man­ag­er, Noel Gar­cia, dis­missed the UNC’s al­le­ga­tions, ac­cus­ing the par­ty of pro­ject­ing its own cam­paign tac­tics on­to the PNM.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about when the bot­tles were dis­trib­uted and whether it was part of the cam­paign, Gar­cia said:

“I have run cam­paigns for 25 years, and to sug­gest that dis­trib­ut­ing wa­ter bot­tles is part of my strat­e­gy is in­sult­ing and de­mean­ing. I am not the UNC. The PNM does not run its cam­paign like the UNC. We do not per­suade sup­port­ers with trin­kets and mon­ey. We per­suade our sup­port­ers through com­pelling ar­gu­ments on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and the fu­ture of this coun­try. To im­ply that part of my strat­e­gy or St Joseph’s or Deyals­ingh’s strat­e­gy is to dis­trib­ute wa­ter bot­tles—to quote the late prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day—‘That is in­sult­ing.’”

In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion tight-lipped

Mean­while, In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Haydn Git­tens de­clined to con­firm whether the body is in­ves­ti­gat­ing Deyals­ingh or his par­lia­men­tary col­league Adri­an Leonce, who has been ac­cused of hav­ing ties to an over­seas crim­i­nal. Git­tens stat­ed that the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act pre­vents him from dis­clos­ing any in­for­ma­tion pub­licly.