Shal­iza Has­sanali

Busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael is gear­ing up to con­test the St Au­gus­tine seat as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, as he called on con­stituents to re­ject Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Khadi­jah Ameen who he de­scribed as a non-per­former.

Should Ish­mael win the UNC safe seat, he promised to do­nate 50 per cent of his earn­ings “back in­to the con­stituen­cy” to help the poor and needy.

In a Face­book post on Sun­day, Ish­mael promised to con­test the Au­gust 10 polls once Ameen is se­lect­ed.

Yes­ter­day, Ish­mael post­ed a video on so­cial me­dia, stat­ing that he al­ready has a vot­ing sym­bol in mind - an up­ward ar­row - that vot­ers can eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy and put their X next to in the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

He plead­ed with con­stituents to throw their sup­port be­hind him.

Ish­mael said Ameen nev­er de­liv­ered as coun­cil­lor and chair­man of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) and for her to con­test this con­stituen­cy was a poor choice by the par­ty.

For a decade, Ish­mael said con­stituents suf­fered for prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion un­der MP Prakash Ra­mad­har.

“And like these politi­cians don’t care, they tell you take that and hard luck. Nah, no way. I am go­ing to ral­ly the peo­ple of St Au­gus­tine. This is one con­stituen­cy is go­ing to an­swer back. We do not want Khadi­jah Ameen.”

Ish­mael said it was time peo­ple let their voic­es be heard.

“For those of you in St Au­gus­tine, I want you to raise your voic­es and let us re­ject Khadi­jah...from the on­set. Get rid of her.”

He said the road and drains in Bam­boo Set­tle­ment were “done” through his in­ter­ven­tion.

Ish­mael said he nev­er want­ed to get in­volved in pol­i­tics but Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pushed him by “throw­ing Khadi­jah in our area to in­sult the peo­ple of St Au­gus­tine.”

In re­sponse to Ish­mael’s chal­lenge, Ameen said: “May the best per­son win.”

She said her work as chair­man of the TPRC was there to show but more needs to be done.

Ameen said the peo­ple of St Au­gus­tine have her full com­mit­ment.