Who is popular today?

THE EDITOR: My good friend, Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal, seems headed for a political breakthrough in the PNM stronghold of Laventille. He boasted of being loved not only in his constituency but now by the good people of the Beetham. He was moved to declare that the “only place I am more loved than Oropouche East is, I believe, in the Beetham.”
What a breakthrough! He has finally stripped his leader, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, of her alleged crossover appeal and is now ready to challenge Watson Duke and Gary Griffith in the battle to take Laventille from the PNM.
I want to urge Moonilal, before he takes himself seriously, to have a conversation with former UNC works minister Sadiq Baksh. He had also believed in a Laventille political epiphany during the period 1995-2001.
But this epiphany was not reflected in the general election held on December 11, 2000 or the one that followed a year later, on December 10, 2001. In the 2000 poll, Laventille East/Morvant elected the PNM’s Fitzgerald Hinds with 11,335 votes. The UNC candidate Valerie Hinds received 2,584 votes. Next door in the Laventille West seat, PNM’s Eulalie James polled 10,733 votes as against the UNC candidate Kenneth Munroe-Brown, who polled 1,493 votes.
A similar trend followed in 2001. In Laventille East/Morvant, PNM’s Fitzgerald Hinds polled 10,049 votes as against 1,912 for the UNC’s Valerie Hinds and 147 votes for Team Unity’s Herbert J Burgis. And in Laventille West, PNM’s Eulalie James polled 9,224 votes as against 988 votes for UNC’s Princess T Smart and 123 votes for Team Unity’s Curtis T Shade.
Take note Moonilal, Duke and Griffith, even in the political seismic shakeup in 1986, the PNM was as steady as a rock in Laventille.

HARRY PARTAP

former UNC MP
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