PNM To­ba­go West can­di­date Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis says TPP’s Joel “Nuttsy” Samp­son has not spo­ken a sin­gle word to vot­ers on his own through­out the cam­paign—and she’s dar­ing him to put down the writ­ten speech­es and face To­ba­go.

“Every night he talk­ing from a plat­form and read­ing one word at a time from a speech his po­lit­i­cal leader give him. He didn’t do any re­search. But tonight was the night for him to come for­ward and speak—no duck­ing, no hid­ing, no bob­bing, no weav­ing. No Com­fort. Ap­pear Nuttsy, ap­pear and meet me,” she said.

She is­sued the chal­lenge af­ter Samp­son failed to at­tend the To­ba­go Chan­nel 5 de­bate on Tues­day night with the eight oth­er To­ba­go West con­tenders.

Sham­fa mocked his cam­paign, claim­ing he has been read­ing speech­es writ­ten by his po­lit­i­cal leader and can­not speak for him­self.

“Mr Joel ‘Nuttsy’ Samp­son—yes­ter­day, I’m call­ing you by name—re­fused to show up be­cause you have a movie night,” she said dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Buc­coo that night.

"Run­ning a coun­try is big peo­ple busi­ness… you have to put down your po­lit­i­cal par­ty and take up the ar­mour of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

She said she ar­rived ear­ly to the de­bate and wait­ed, ready to con­front him with re­al is­sues, giv­en that he holds re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for sports and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment in To­ba­go while she leads those sec­tors na­tion­al­ly.

“I want­ed to ask him—every night he talk­ing about Dwight Yorke Sta­di­um. But you re­spon­si­ble for sport in To­ba­go. So what hap­pen­ing with the fields in Canaan, Gold­en Lane, Char­lot­teville? What hap­pened to the re­fur­bish­ment there? What hap­pened to the To­ba­go sport pol­i­cy?”

She crit­i­cised his record, say­ing he had failed to sup­port ath­letes and re­fused to fund To­ba­go’s ath­let­ic clubs.

“Tell me why the To­ba­go Ath­let­ic Com­mit­tee still de­funct. Why you refuse to fund To­ba­go ath­let­ic clubs? Where’s the trans­paren­cy? The mon­ey go­ing out, but we don’t know how. We want to know to who.”

Cud­joe-Lewis urged him to “stop hid­ing” and ex­plain his con­tri­bu­tions.

“You’ve been there close to a year—show me who you help. What fa­cil­i­ty you re­fur­bish? Rox­bor­ough Sec­ondary School is num­ber one in track and field in Trinidad and To­ba­go and their field in a mess.”

She said she in­ter­vened in her ca­pac­i­ty as Min­is­ter of Sport.

“They wrote to me. I de­liv­ered over $100,000. SportTT work­ing with them now to fix it.”

To set­tle the de­bate over who has done more for the is­land’s ath­letes, she sum­moned him: “Nuttsy, ap­pear and meet me, Sham­fa, right here.”