Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Is­sues of crime and pub­lic safe­ty were in full fo­cus for can­di­dates vy­ing for Tu­na­puna, as they shared their vi­sion and ex­pec­ta­tions af­ter fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

For­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ can­di­date Roger Alexan­der was the first to com­plete the nom­i­na­tion process, as he ar­rived at the Up­per El Do­ra­do Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, on Col­lege Road, just be­fore 9 am, flanked by sup­port­ers and mu­sic trucks with drum­mers.

Speak­ing with re­porters, Alexan­der said he in­tend­ed to “lift the clouds” of un­cer­tain­ty which he said lin­gered over Tu­na­puna and sought to give all arms of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices the as­sur­ance that re­sources to do their job prop­er­ly were on the way, once his par­ty won.

Re­fer­ring to his re­cent de­par­ture from the po­lice ser­vice af­ter a 33-year ca­reer, Alexan­der said he felt a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in tak­ing the next step to­wards rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

“To­day is a brand new day in my life. I left a place where I was com­fort­able watch­ing, but not sat­is­fied and I know that I can and I will make a change to en­sure that safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty re­turns to this great na­tion.”

Alexan­der al­so re­spond­ed to ru­mours that he may be se­lect­ed as Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty if the UNC won, not­ing that he did have a con­ver­sa­tion with the par­ty’s leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and was pre­pared to serve wher­ev­er the lead­er­ship felt was nec­es­sary.

In­cum­bent Tu­na­puna MP and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) can­di­date Es­mond Forde ar­rived at the cen­tre two hours lat­er to fan­fare from sup­port­ers.

Forde ad­dressed con­cerns of crime as he main­tained that the po­lice and com­mu­ni­ties in Tu­na­puna have worked hard to­wards es­tab­lish­ing a bet­ter rap­port through var­i­ous stake­hold­er meet­ings.

He al­so thanked the po­lice for var­i­ous ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing the Cit­i­zen Se­cu­ri­ty Net­work which us­es an in­te­grat­ed se­cu­ri­ty cam­era sys­tem across Tu­na­puna and its en­vi­rons which can be ac­cessed by po­lice to pro­vide re­al-time footage on crimes.

Forde main­tained while he would not en­gage in any bick­er­ing with po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents, he ques­tioned Alexan­der’s val­ue to the con­stituen­cy as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“If the can­di­date you all are speak­ing about... he’s sup­posed to be pop­u­lar... I think he was a po­lice­man for many years, what has he done?

“What is he go­ing to do to bring to the ta­ble now?

“We have been work­ing in Tu­na­puna, crime has been down, we have had a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings to bring to the peo­ple what we are go­ing to do about crime and that’s the rep­re­sen­ta­tion we have been do­ing.”

Forde al­so de­fend­ed his “com­mu­ni­ty-based” ap­proach to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, re­spond­ing to crit­i­cisms from some peo­ple on so­cial me­dia that he was seen at so­cial and fam­i­ly gath­er­ings.

“Elec­tion and pol­i­tics isn’t about paving the roads and drainage and so on, it’s about rep­re­sent­ing and be­ing in peo­ple’s homes.”

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance’s (NTA) can­di­date Savi­ta Pierre said she has been on the ground and en­gag­ing res­i­dents to hear their thoughts and con­cerns.

As filed her nom­i­na­tion pa­pers, Pierre said crime and safe­ty were high pri­or­i­ty is­sues for res­i­dents.

“You will un­der­stand my po­lit­i­cal leader’s back­ground be­ing one of the best com­mis­sion­ers of po­lice that has passed through Trinidad and To­ba­go, so you know we are well equipped to deal with safe­ty in T&T and safe­ty in Tu­na­puna.”