Sascha Wil­son

An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty is eye­ing the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of San Fer­nan­do West mak­ing it a five-way race for that seat so far.

It’s the on­ly seat the Valmi­ki “Val” Ram­s­ingh of the Na­tion­al Par­ty will be con­test­ing in the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

While Ram­s­ingh is well known in the Car­ni­val are­na as the band­leader of the pop­u­lar D Blue Boys J’Ou­vert band, he is no stranger to pol­i­tics.

He was part of Ka­ma Ma­haraj’s cam­paign team in 1995. He al­so served as a di­rec­tor on a State board and has a wealth of ex­pe­ri­ence on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment.

“Hav­ing been in­volved in the UNC and when Kam­la took over I did not like what I was see­ing there and my con­science be­gan both­er­ing me that I could not be part of it and I said okay I wouldn’t both­er with pol­i­tics again. Then some­body told me you have too much ex­pe­ri­ence and too much to of­fer to stay out of pol­i­tics,” he said in an in­ter­view.

He launched his po­lit­i­cal par­ty in 2017 un­der the slo­gan Change, not Ex­change and be­gan un­der­ground cam­paign­ing.

Even though sev­er­al can­di­dates will be fight­ing for this seat which is cur­rent­ly held by the PNM, he be­lieves his on­ly com­pe­ti­tion is the PNM and the UNC.

“I feel I have the big­ger edge be­ing a San Fer­nan­di­an, one. Two, be­ing in­volved in J’Ou­vert, in pan. I am a mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist by pro­fes­sion. I have helped a pile of peo­ple,” he said.

Ram­s­ingh said he has been re­ceiv­ing out­pour­ing sup­port dur­ing his cam­paign on the ground.

He said, “I re­al­ly did not know I have so much sup­port. Nine­ty per cent of the peo­ple I have walked and met so far have in­di­cat­ed that they will vote for change.”

To his crit­ics, he said, “If there ever were a time for a third par­ty to get in­to Par­lia­ment this is the year be­cause the PNM did such great job of bad talk­ing the UNC for five years. Resid­ual in the minds of the peo­ple are still all of what the UNC did be­cause the PNM bad talk the UNC so much and then their time came and they did their bunch of non­sense.”

If he wins the seat one of the ma­jor is­sues he will be tack­ing in the con­stituen­cy is the wa­ter woes in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Ram­s­ingh said he is al­so fo­cussing on re­viv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it in San Fer­nan­do and the com­mence­ment of the car park for the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

He al­so en­vi­sions ma­jor projects for the south­ern city such as a so­lar pan­el man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny at Pointe-a-Pierre and an air­port at Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, as well as an agro-pro­cess­ing in­dus­try.

The oth­er can­di­dates who have thrown their hat in­to the ring for the San Fer­nan­do West Seat thus far are UNC’s Sean Sobers, PNM’s Faris Al-Rawi, Pro­gres­sive Par­ty’s Nikoli Ed­wards and Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty’s Beni­son Jages­sar.