SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

One week af­ter los­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) con­trolled San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), out­go­ing cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ter­ry Ron­don is call­ing on new­ly elect­ed coun­cil­lors to avoid pol­i­tics from get­ting in the way of their work and pulling and tug­ging.

The call was made by Ron­don yes­ter­day dur­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny of the cor­po­ra­tion’s five UNC and three PNM coun­cil­lors.

In the com­ing days, the name of the cor­po­ra­tion’s chair­man and its four al­der­men-two of whom are PNM will be named.

The swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny was the first for the UNC since win­ning sev­en of the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions in last Mon­day’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

In the 2016 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, there was a 4-4 tie be­tween the UNC and PNM for the SGRC.

Ron­don used his cast­ing vote to break the dead­lock with the PNM tak­ing con­trol of the cor­po­ra­tion.

The swear­ing-in was wit­nessed by UNC’s deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Khadi­jah Ameen and To­co/San­gre Grande MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith.

In his wel­come re­marks to coun­cil mem­bers, Ron­don said he would not sit in the cor­po­ra­tion and see un­fair­ness met­ed out to cit­i­zens, as every­one must be treat­ed equal­ly re­gard­less of which par­ty they vot­ed for.

He said coun­cil­lors have to gel to take the SGRC for­ward.

“We have to stop the pulling and tug­ging.”

Ron­don said he was will­ing to work with the UNC but not un­der the ban­ner of “par­ti­san pol­i­tics.”

He urged coun­cil­lors to take their job se­ri­ous­ly.

In his two terms as chair­man, Ron­don said he had ob­served coun­cil­lors fail­ing in their du­ties.

“They not com­ing to meet­ings. They have an at­ti­tude and just af­ter lunch they gone.”

Should there be any wrong­do­ing in the cor­po­ra­tion, Ron­don promised to speak out.

Apart from not serv­ing burgess­es, Ron­don in­sist­ed that some coun­cil­lors were self-cen­tred and self -serv­ing.

“Stop the greed!” he urged them.

Ron­don said there was a lot of self­ish­ness in the last coun­cil which he stopped.

“It was me and I and not we and us.”

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, Ron­don said the greed hinges on coun­cil­lors who on­ly want bet­ter­ment for their elec­toral dis­tricts.

“We have to share. You alone must not get every­thing.”

He warned coun­cil­lors to de­sist from mak­ing false promis­es to burgess­es.

Ques­tioned if pol­i­tics was get­ting in the way of the cor­po­ra­tion’s work, Ron­don said yes.

“Al­ready the pol­i­tics is get­ting in and I am to­tal­ly dis­turbed about it be­cause I deal fair in­side here.”

He said sin­gle par­ents should have al­ready been giv­en ten days work.

“Why keep back....hold back poor peo­ple? That is one of my re­grets, you know, that I am not the chair­man to­day. To see, they play­ing with the lives of poor peo­ple.”

With San­gre Grande hav­ing the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of pover­ty in the coun­try, Ron­don said it was time for coun­cil to buck­le down and work.

Bask­ing in the glo­ry of the UNC’s vic­to­ry, Ameen de­scribed the PNM’s spend­ing in the north­east­ern re­gion dur­ing cam­paign­ing as ob­scene.

Many vot­ers, Ameen said were turned off by PNM’s spend­ing spree to at­tract votes.

“They were of­fer­ing peo­ple mon­ey...cash to vote. Cash to at­tend meet­ings and to sup­port meet­ings to­geth­er with their T-shirts. That did not get the vote clear­ly. Mon­ey does not buy love...mon­ey does not buy sup­port.”

Ameen es­ti­mat­ed the PNM spent mil­lions of dol­lars in flags, buntings, jer­seys, cash in­cen­tives and road paving.

She said the op­pres­sion the peo­ple in San­gre Grande faced in the last four years was enough for them to turn against the PNM.

“They would have tak­en the mon­ey and vot­ed based on their con­science.”

In the paving fren­zy, Ameen said many roads were poor­ly paved which the UNC would have to re­do.