SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

De­spite be­ing marred in con­tro­ver­sy in the days lead­ing up to the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, Ju­nia Re­grel­lo was once again se­lect­ed as the May­or of San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

Re­grel­lo was elect­ed un­op­posed at the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion Au­di­to­ri­um short­ly be­fore 4 pm. Af­ter­wards, he told re­porters he an­swered the call of his par­ty, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), to serve and had changed his plan to leave pol­i­tics to climb Mount Ever­est.

The city has a new deputy may­or, Dr Fer­ri Ho­sein. Two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) al­der­men, Rooplal Sama­roo and Col­in Leza­ma were al­so sworn in yes­ter­day.

The cer­e­mo­ny was at­tend­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al Rawi, Tourism Min­is­ter and San Fer­nan­do East MP Ran­dall Mitchell and Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the PNM, Joan Yuille-Williams.

Days be­fore the LGE on De­cem­ber 2, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ac­cused Re­grel­lo of hir­ing his son to work at the Cor­po­ra­tion. Ini­tial­ly, Re­grel­lo de­nied the al­le­ga­tion but af­ter Guardian Me­dia’s in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­porter Mark Bas­sant showed him copies of cheques made out to his son Nicholas Re­grel­lo, he ad­mit­ted he was em­ployed with the cor­po­ra­tion.

At that time, he said he did not con­sid­er his son’s em­ploy­ment to be a case of nepo­tism.

Yes­ter­day, City Cor­po­ra­tion’s CEO In­dar­jit Singh was asked if Re­grel­lo’s son is still em­ployed there. Singh said he did not know and took a phone num­ber to pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion lat­er on in the day. At 6.20 pm, Singh had not of­fered any up­date on the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed.

Both of Re­grel­lo’s sons and his wife were present at the swear­ing-in.

Re­grel­lo said he was grate­ful to PNM leader Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for al­low­ing him to serve San Fer­nan­do. He said Row­ley saw in him “the ca­pac­i­ty, temer­i­ty and de­ter­mi­na­tion to serve.”

He added: “Root­ed in fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and en­sur­ing val­ue for mon­ey and ef­fi­cien­cy and of ac­tions, we were able to do more with less.”

Re­grel­lo list­ed among his ac­com­plish­ments as May­or from 2016 to 2019 that he had not print­ed call cards or pur­chase a new ve­hi­cle for the May­or’s of­fice be­cause “we were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times and those funds, in my view, would have been bet­ter spent ad­dress­ing the needs of the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do.”

He added: “Whether in­fra­struc­tur­al, so­cial or cul­tur­al, to­geth­er we have be­gun the march to­wards a bet­ter fu­ture for our city.”

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein ad­vised the new­ly sworn-in coun­cil­lors and al­der­men to lis­ten to their con­stituents. He al­so ad­vised those new to pol­i­tics to be care­ful of how they car­ry them­selves as they are po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­posed.

“I want to re­mind you, take your oath of of­fice very se­ri­ous­ly. This is not about fame and for­tune, this is about be­ing on the ground. Be trans­par­ent in every sin­gle thing you do be­cause every­body have a phone in their hand, they want to tape you, put you on Face­book but the truth will al­ways come out.

“Lis­ten and learn. Don’t do any­thing to em­bar­rass your­self, your fam­i­ly or the par­ty that you be­long to,” he said.