PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Once de­scribed as the right-hand man of La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP Fos­ter Cum­mings, Phillip Watts emerged as the MP’s po­lit­i­cal ri­val as he walked the con­stituen­cy wear­ing a dark blue jer­sey with yel­low stripes and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress lo­go on his chest.

Join­ing Watts on the walk­a­bout along the Tal­paro Main Road was UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John, the par­ty’s de­feat­ed 2020 can­di­date. John, Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands, strong­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for Watts’ se­lec­tion as the par­ty’s can­di­date for the area.

Watts’ de­ci­sion to join the UNC shocked both par­ties, giv­en his 14-year tenure as the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

Sources close to the con­stituen­cy group said Watts played a cru­cial role in both Cum­mings’ 2020 cam­paign and that of for­mer MP Max­ie Cuffie (2015–2020).

Cuffie, who suf­fered a stroke in 2017, de­cid­ed not to con­test the 2020 elec­tion as he stat­ed he did not wish to have his “health is­sues be­come a dis­trac­tion from the crit­i­cal is­sues the coun­try would be fac­ing dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.”

With Watts in his cor­ner, Cum­mings would take up the man­tle, win­ning the seat over Jear­lean John by 1,921 votes.

How­ev­er, Watts and Cum­mings’ re­la­tion­ship re­port­ed­ly soured a cou­ple of years ago, lead­ing them to dis­as­so­ci­ate from each oth­er. Watts made him­self avail­able for screen­ing by the Op­po­si­tion UNC last month and was con­firmed as the UNC’s can­di­date for the area on Fri­day.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Watts opt­ed not to com­ment on his rea­son for join­ing the UNC and di­rect­ly op­pos­ing his for­mer col­league. He ex­plained he planned to dis­cuss his de­ci­sion pub­licly on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form soon.

“What I in­tend to do, we will re­lease that type of in­for­ma­tion on our plat­form. When I speak on the plat­form in Brazil, I will re­lease that type of in­for­ma­tion there,” Watts said, re­fer­ring to a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing set to be held by the UNC in Brazil Vil­lage on March 17.

“You all could just fol­low the meet­ing and when I do a state­ment, I will send it out and share it with you all in Brazil,” he said.

Dur­ing the walk­a­bout yes­ter­day, the UNC loud­speak­ers urged con­stituents to meet Watts and en­cour­aged them to at­tend the March 17 meet­ing.

In a no­table show of sup­port, Max­ie Cuffie’s broth­ers, Cur­tis and Dex­ter, joined Watts on the walk­a­bout, wear­ing UNC T-shirts.

On Fri­day, when an­nounc­ing Watts as their can­di­date, the UNC de­scribed the con­stituen­cy as mar­gin­al, as the par­ty felt it had made sig­nif­i­cant ground in the area.

MP Fos­ter Cum­mings did not re­spond to calls yes­ter­day for a com­ment on Watts’ can­di­da­cy.