An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Two po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts have de­scribed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) se­lec­tion of for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der to con­test the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-held Tu­na­puna seat as a strate­gic move.

Alexan­der was un­veiled as the UNC’s can­di­date dur­ing a meet­ing at the North­east­ern Col­lege, San­gre Grande, on Sat­ur­day night.

Telling the crowd that every­one had asked him why he jumped in­to pol­i­tics from the TTPS, he ex­plained, “You lis­ten to dif­fer­ent lead­ers, and you choose the one that is aligned with your vi­sion and your dreams of a bet­ter T&T.”

He as­sured that once he is elect­ed, Tu­na­puna busi­ness own­ers will feel safe and no longer have to pay any mon­ey de­mand­ed by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said he be­lieved Alexan­der was cho­sen specif­i­cal­ly to deal with Tu­na­puna, which is deemed a crime hotspot area, and was a strate­gic move by UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“I sup­pose he is as good and knows how to keep a neigh­bour­hood safe and cer­tain­ly what some of the polic­ing mea­sures should be. I’m sure she has cho­sen some­body who’s wide­ly known, and I think wide­ly re­spect­ed as well,” James said.

“If you are go­ing not on­ly with the par­ty but al­so with the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the par­ty, then you might say that se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Alexan­der is an as­set. Based on those things that I am telling you here, I don’t have his plans, and I would be in­ter­est­ed to see what his plans are, but I do know that he’s a fa­mous face, eas­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able, a guy who has ap­peared on me­dia with views con­cern­ing how crime can be con­tained.”

Al­so weigh­ing in was po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath, who said Alexan­der may have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of pop­u­lar­i­ty, but this was not with­in the po­lit­i­cal realm.

“Peo­ple will know him in his crime-fight­ing and tele­vi­sion broad­cast­ing as­pects of his life. The UNC po­lit­i­cal leader spoke about a Home Af­fairs Min­istry and to that ex­tent, that is what she’s think­ing should the UNC win the elec­tion, that there’s a place for Roger Alexan­der in terms of guid­ing the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices, in terms of how they treat the crim­i­nal el­e­ment. We know for a fact that the present Gov­ern­ment has been un­able to ar­rest the crime sit­u­a­tion. I mean even with a State of Emer­gency, we still have climb­ing mur­der rates,” Ra­goonath dis­closed.

He not­ed that there was a gang op­er­at­ing to the north of Tu­na­puna and this was prob­a­bly what was the UNC think­ing about by bring­ing in Alexan­der.

Union sup­port may not bring votes

Al­so mount­ing the plat­form on Sat­ur­day night was Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas, who threw her union’s sup­port be­hind the UNC, say­ing work­ers can­not sur­vive five more years un­der the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment. (See page 8)

Giv­ing his view, Dr James said the trade union lead­er­ship now back­ing the par­ty could bring peo­ple to the UNC.

“They can join forces with UNC and there­fore broad­en their sup­port. But that has to be in ar­eas we have called mar­gin­al, not the ar­eas where both par­ties have large mar­gins of vic­to­ry. Those con­stituen­cies that have large mar­gins of vic­to­ry for ei­ther par­ty will con­tin­ue to pro­vide the two main par­ties with such ad­van­tages,” he said.

James said he did not know how the PNM would re­spond to the de­vel­op­ments of the trade unions grav­i­tat­ing to the UNC.

How­ev­er, Dr Ra­goonath, giv­ing a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on the mat­ter, said the lead­er­ship of unions align­ing them­selves with po­lit­i­cal par­ties would not nec­es­sar­i­ly equate to the union mem­ber­ship vot­ing for the said par­ty.

“If I may go back to years past, the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the trade union move­ment, and more crit­i­cal­ly, the OW­TU, the lead­er­ship of the MSJ was al­so with­in the lead­er­ship of the OW­TU. But yet still, the MSJ could nev­er have won the seats, even in the oil belt where the OW­TU had its base,” he said.