Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress can­di­date for Point Fortin, Ernesto Ke­sar, ac­cused out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley of lack­ing em­pa­thy to­wards vic­tims of crime and their fam­i­lies.

Ke­sar was com­ment­ing on Row­ley’s re­sponse to a ques­tion on crime dur­ing a re­cent in­ter­view with jour­nal­ists in a pre-record­ed broad­cast ti­tled From Ma­son Hall to White­hall: The Clos­ing Chap­ter.

Asked if he had failed to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion, Row­ley said, “I would not use the word fail. I would say that we have been chal­lenged, be­fore I came in­to this of­fice. We have been chal­lenged through­out the pe­ri­od and as I leave the chal­lenge con­tin­ues. But it is not a ques­tion of an ab­sence of ef­fort.” 

Ke­sar, who kicked off his elec­tion cam­paign in Point Fortin over the week­end with a walk­a­bout, claimed Row­ley’s re­sponse lacked em­pa­thy. 

Ke­sar said, “I will ask you the me­dia who have been cov­er­ing this thing for the last ten years, you put it to the vic­tims of crime that it was “A” for ef­fort that caused their loved ones to be mur­dered, to be snuffed out un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly...The cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ues not to dis­play em­pa­thy, to give the me­dia some flip­pant re­spons­es to very se­ri­ous is­sues that have af­fect­ed this coun­try.”

Ke­sar added, “We need to get back to a type of gov­er­nance that has heart. A type of gov­er­nance that is em­pa­thet­ic. A type of gov­er­nance that cares about the peo­ple who vote for them.”

Promis­ing that type of rep­re­sen­ta­tion if he wins, Ke­sar said he would al­so tack­le the “crit­i­cal is­sue” in the south­west­ern penin­su­lar of un­em­ploy­ment which he claimed in­creased fol­low­ing Petrotrin’s clo­sure, sports as a form of em­ploy­ment, sup­port for small busi­ness­es and im­proved in­fra­struc­ture.