RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

San Fer­nan­do West is a con­stituen­cy of sharp con­trasts, where wealthy fam­i­lies, mid­dle-class res­i­dents, and some of Trinidad’s poor­est squat­ters live side by side—yet re­main worlds apart.

Some squat­ters of Bayshore, Mara­bel­la, Em­ba­cadere, Pak­istan on the Train­line and King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, still oc­cu­py shacks with in­ad­e­quate drainage, im­prop­er toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, and crum­bling in­fra­struc­ture.

In wealth­i­er re­gions of Gulf View, Sun­set Cove, and Vista­bel­la, grand man­sions stand emp­ty, how­ev­er, as ris­ing crime has dri­ven res­i­dents to seek safer lives abroad.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, his­to­ri­an and lec­tur­er at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, said this eco­nom­ic di­vide was re­flect­ed in San Fer­nan­do West’s vot­ing pat­terns, mak­ing it one of the most un­pre­dictable and close­ly watched mar­gin­al seats in the coun­try.

He said over the years, a grow­ing base of swing vot­ers had shift­ed al­le­giance, mov­ing away from the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which has held the seat for 57 years since 1956, to oth­er par­ties in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) and the Con­gress of the Peo­ple.

Dr Teelucks­ingh be­lieves with in­creas­ing eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties and vot­er dis­con­tent, the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion could once again re­shape the po­lit­i­cal land­scape of this bat­tle­ground seat.

“I ex­pect a strong ground cam­paign to reach first-time vot­ers and al­so to con­vince those who are un­in­ter­est­ed in vot­ing. The usu­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of par­ty para­pher­na­lia (such as caps and jer­seys) will not be enough to con­vince the ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers to sup­port a par­ty,” Dr Teelucks­ingh pre­dict­ed.

Life in squalor

At the Mara­bel­la Train­line, Guardian Me­dia caught up with am­putee Ri­az Mo­hammed, who lives in a ply­wood house with his wife Jade and their two teenage chil­dren. But just op­po­site his home, new hous­es were be­ing con­struct­ed un­der the gov­ern­ment’s Home and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme (HVIP), a project ini­ti­at­ed by MP Faris Al-Rawi and geared at pro­vid­ing dig­ni­ty and sta­bil­i­ty to the poor. How­ev­er, Mo­hammed says these hous­es have not im­proved the lives of any­one he knows.

“I in­quired, and they told me these hous­es are al­ready giv­en away to cer­tain peo­ple,” Mo­hammed lament­ed. “No­body comes here to find out how I cop­ing. It’s a friend thing go­ing on here; who they favour will get hous­es, not we.”

He said in the mean­time, the Train­line fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to suf­fer.

“The chil­dren get rash­es be­cause of the con­di­tion of the drain. My son is asth­mat­ic, and I al­ways have to be back and forth with him in the hos­pi­tal. Things do not change with pol­i­tics. Life re­mains tough,” Mo­hammed said.

Oth­er res­i­dents, who de­clined to go on cam­era, ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of ig­nor­ing their needs. They said high un­em­ploy­ment was their biggest set­back.

At Em­ba­cadere, San Fer­nan­do, a tra­di­tion­al PNM strong­hold, res­i­dents al­so ex­pressed dis­con­tent­ment. Here too, some up­grades had been done at the wa­ter­front with a spank­ing new sign erect­ed along with paved park­ing near Par­adise Beach. But res­i­dent Richard Lon­don de­scribed these works as a gim­mick.

“Look at this beach­front; not a sin­gle light here. They build this road, but peo­ple com­ing to bathe go­ing to get robbed. This come like a rob­bery hole,” Lon­don said.

He dis­missed the wa­ter­front works at King’s Wharf as a waste.

An­oth­er res­i­dent, Ar­lene De Carter, crit­i­cised politi­cians for ne­glect­ing the ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment needs of the Em­ba­cadere peo­ple.

“In this area, we have plen­ty chil­dren who have to stay home be­cause their par­ents can’t af­ford to send them to school. Why they don’t send a school bus sys­tem in here to take chil­dren to school,” she ques­tioned.

She said those who ob­tained all their aca­d­e­m­ic pass­es were find­ing it hard to get work.

“The youths here have no work—just gam­bling, wap­pie, eat­ing, and drink­ing. Even those with qual­i­fi­ca­tions can’t get jobs,” she said.

An­oth­er res­i­dent who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty claimed on­ly the gang­sters of Em­ba­cadere were get­ting work.

“The reg­u­lar peo­ple have to stay home. No won­der it has so many de­pressed peo­ple here,” he said.

At Ol­era Heights, res­i­dent Dar­celle Sealey al­so said it was time to stop racial vot­ing.

“I am hop­ing that peo­ple will wise up and don’t let this be about racism, the colour of your skin. Let it be that you are do­ing some­thing for San Fer­nan­do West. They are not do­ing enough for chil­dren, for sin­gle par­ents and youths,” Sealey said.

Ar­lene Or­dain from Mon Re­pos ex­pressed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the con­duct of politi­cians.

“In these ar­eas where they call the ghet­to, we have the tal­ent­ed foot­ballers and bas­ket­ballers, but we don’t get recog­nised be­cause of our pover­ty. So no­body gives the op­por­tu­ni­ties to us, so we are just out here on our own try­ing to fight and do the nor­mal dai­ly strug­gle,” she said.

UNC’s can­di­date Dr Michael Dowlath out­lines plans

Mean­while, UNC can­di­date Dr Michael Dowlath said San Fer­nan­do West was one of the most di­verse con­stituen­cies.

“Most peo­ple need ba­sic hous­ing, jobs, and sup­port for their chil­dren. Those who did not do well in sec­ondary school need sup­port for em­ploy­ment. Many ar­eas have not re­ceived the nec­es­sary sup­port from the cen­tral gov­ern­ment,” Dowlath said.

He high­light­ed on­go­ing prob­lems such as un­cleaned drains and piles of bulk garbage.

“In one area, there was a pump­kin patch grow­ing out of the garbage. Peo­ple do not see the MP Faris Al-Rawi, and there is no re­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

Dowlath said the UNC was record­ing is­sues street by street and de­vel­op­ing a man­i­festo.

“We are lis­ten­ing to peo­ple. We want to de­vel­op two home­work cen­tres in Em­ba­cadere and Train­line, pro­vide vo­ca­tion­al train­ing for youths who did not achieve CXC pass­es, and cre­ate job place­ments in the Caribbean. There is a fu­ture for youths.”

He al­so pro­posed im­prove­ments to com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, pen­sions, and le­gal firearm ac­cess for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“Safe­ty for house­holds and per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty is a high pri­or­i­ty. Peo­ple want to walk the streets safe­ly. We will im­prove street light­ing and eq­ui­ty in re­source dis­tri­b­u­tion across San Fer­nan­do West,” he vowed.

Al-Rawi de­fends record, lists ma­jor projects

But in­cum­bent MP Faris Al-Rawi ac­knowl­edged the dis­par­i­ties in his con­stituen­cy, say­ing, “San Fer­nan­do West is a pe­cu­liar place. We have the very poor, the mid­dle class and the very wealthy, and of­ten they do not speak to each oth­er.”

Al-Rawi de­fend­ed his tenure, say­ing two bil­lion dol­lars had been spent to im­prove life in the con­stituen­cy, which has an elec­torate of over 25,000 peo­ple. Among these was the $78 mil­lion San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Land Recla­ma­tion project, which re­claimed 3.8 hectares of land for in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel de­vel­op­ments, set to boost tourism and em­ploy­ment.

The fish­ing fa­cil­i­ty is 98 per cent com­plet­ed, he said, not­ing that the fa­cil­i­ty should be ful­ly op­er­a­tional by April 2025 to sup­port lo­cal fish­er­men.

He said the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to the ten­der­ing phase of a $67 mil­lion project to se­cure the San Fer­nan­do wa­ter­front, fol­low­ing key road widen­ing and util­i­ty in­stal­la­tion works.

“At La­dy Hailes Av­enue, widen­ing has been com­plet­ed. We em­barked on a $136 mil­lion up­grade to im­prove traf­fic flow and pedes­tri­an ac­cess, with new walkovers for Em­ba­cadere and Ram­saran Street,” he said.

He not­ed that the squat­ter re­lo­ca­tion and re­de­vel­op­ment was on­go­ing. Oth­er projects com­plet­ed, he said, were the $43 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to pro­vide mod­ern hous­ing for dis­placed res­i­dents, PTSC bus yard re­lo­ca­tion, and the $160 mil­lion Skin­ner Park up­grade.

“Close to a thou­sand fam­i­lies have ben­e­fit­ed; hun­dreds of hous­es have been. We have con­nect­ed over a thou­sand hous­es with the San Fer­nan­do Waste Wa­ter project,” he said.

An­a­lysts weigh in

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Maukesh Bas­deo said with sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic di­vides, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and on­go­ing con­cerns about rep­re­sen­ta­tion, it was too ear­ly to de­ter­mine the fate of San Fer­nan­do West.

He said as the elec­tion looms, both par­ties need to con­vince vot­ers they of­fered re­al so­lu­tions to the con­stituen­cy’s long-stand­ing prob­lems. He said as the cam­paign be­comes more in­tense, what­ev­er was pre­sent­ed to the con­stituents could de­ter­mine how the vote swings.

And Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr Hamid Ghany, said changes in the elec­toral bound­aries may give the UNC the edge.

“The con­stituen­cy will be ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive in the next elec­tion. The re­port of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion rec­om­mend­ed the shift­ing of polling di­vi­sions 4005 and 4006 in Vista­bel­la from San Fer­nan­do East in­to San Fer­nan­do West. An ex­am­i­na­tion of those two polling di­vi­sions in­di­cates a net gain for the UNC as op­posed to the PNM. This makes San Fer­nan­do West more com­pet­i­tive as a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy, in­creas­ing in­ter­est in the race. It is a con­stituen­cy that must be close­ly mon­i­tored. The UNC named its can­di­date ear­ly, and with Faris in the mix, it will be an in­ter­est­ing race, es­pe­cial­ly since those two polling di­vi­sions come from ar­eas that favoured the UNC,” he said.

His­tor­i­cal Elec­tion Da­ta:

1956-1986: PNM held the seat, with rep­re­sen­ta­tives like Win­ston Ma­habir (1956-1961), Saied Mo­hammed (1961-1966), and Er­rol E. Ma­habir (1966-1986).

1986: Anselm St. George of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion (NAR) won the seat.

1991-2000: The PNM re­gained con­trol with Ralph Maraj (1991-1995) and Baren­dra Sinanan (1995-2000).

2000- 2002: Sadiq Baksh of the UNC se­cured the con­stituen­cy.

2002-2010: PNM’s Di­ane Seuk­er­an (2002-2007) and Ju­nia Re­grel­lo (2007-2010) served as MPs.

2010: Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) 2015-Present: Faris Al-Rawi of the PNM has been the MP since 2015.