BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

The Bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas wel­comed its youngest and sec­ond fe­male may­or yes­ter­day as Van­dana Mo­hit, 29, was unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed in­to the post. How­ev­er, her elec­tion has come with some con­tro­ver­sy.

Re­fus­ing to com­ment on the le­git­i­ma­cy of nude pho­tos and videos which be­gan mak­ing the rounds on so­cial me­dia plat­forms, May­or Mo­hit said she has her heart set on one goal.

“I be­lieve in serv­ing peo­ple and I will do so to the best of my abil­i­ty,” she said in an in­ter­view fol­low­ing her swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

Jump­ing to May­or Mo­hit’s de­fence, PRO of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Ani­ta Haynes in­sist­ed the new may­or does not have to con­firm or de­ny any­thing. She added while the par­ty is not sure where those videos and pic­tures orig­i­nat­ed from, this is some­thing a lot of women in the po­lit­i­cal are­na have been forced to face.

Haynes said: “What the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has said is that we will nev­er ever par­tic­i­pate in that kind of pol­i­tics where you try to at­tack per­sons who put them­selves up for ser­vice.”

As the Gen­er­al Elec­tion cam­paigns heat up, the UNC PRO said she ex­pects the pol­i­tics to get dirt­i­er but called on peo­ple to “stand against any of those at­tacks.”

May­or Mo­hit will work along­side Faaiq Mo­hammed who has re­tained his po­si­tion as Deputy May­or.

Tues­day’s cer­e­mo­ny got off to a shaky start be­cause the PNM’s on­ly al­der­man at the Cor­po­ra­tion, Sta­cy Mc Sween, showed up ex­act­ly three hours af­ter the event was card­ed to be­gin. The law stip­u­lates that the in­stal­la­tion of May­or and Deputy May­or can on­ly oc­cur once the coun­cil is ful­ly con­sti­tut­ed.

Mc Sween’s late ar­rival caused the UNC to spec­u­late whether it was an at­tempt by the PNM to hi­jack the pro­ceed­ings.

Haynes told Guardian Me­dia: “It doesn’t seem fea­si­ble that one per­son could hi­jack the en­tire work­ing of a cor­po­ra­tion by ab­sent­ing them­selves from their du­ty and I think it ab­solute­ly does not look well for her tenure.”

How­ev­er, Alder­woman Mc Sween claimed she had no knowl­edge about the cer­e­mo­ny.

“I was aware that my name was nom­i­nat­ed among sev­en oth­er per­sons but to say per­sons called me and told me I had to be here at 9 am, I did not have that in­for­ma­tion.”

Ini­tial­ly there were re­port that Mc Sween and PNM Coun­cil­lor Janelle Joe Ryan did not re­ceive in­vi­ta­tions. How­ev­er, this was de­nied by the cor­po­ra­tion’s CEOs.

Ab­sent from yes­ter­day’s pro­ceed­ings was out­go­ing May­or Gopaul Bood­han. His wife, Shan­ti Bood­han, said they did not re­ceive an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend the event.

Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, who was among the guests who wait­ed for the cer­e­mo­ny to be­gin, con­grat­u­lat­ed the new coun­cil and en­cour­aged the mem­bers to “talk less and lis­ten more.”

He al­so called on the Cor­po­ra­tion’s CEO Ann Ho­sein to forge good work­ing re­la­tion­ships with all mem­bers of coun­cil as there are many in­stances where CEOs refuse to work with the rest of the cor­po­ra­tion.