Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment, head­ed by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Garvin Nicholas, is promis­ing to make a dent in all three Diego Mar­tin con­stituen­cies.

Un­daunt­ed by the re­sults of last year’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion, Nicholas says all of the par­ty’s three can­di­dates have been do­ing the ground­work in the build-up to the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“We want Diego Mar­tin to make the dif­fer­ence be­cause for too long Diego Mar­tin has been ba­si­cal­ly left to fes­ter,” Nicholas told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing an in­ter­view at his Port-of-Spain of­fice last week.

In­stead of pro­gress­ing, Nicholas said, the area has “re­gressed” over the last three decades un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

The MND was re­launched last year, af­ter be­ing in ex­is­tence for close to 15 years, to vie in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. De­spite hav­ing on­ly won 404 votes over­all, Nicholas is op­ti­mistic that the par­ty will cap­ture the hearts of many in the forth­com­ing elec­tion.

“In Diego Mar­tin we have one of the low­est vot­er turnout rates in the coun­try, not be­cause peo­ple are ex­cit­ed about pol­i­tics but they are led to be­lieve that it is a PNM-safe-seat,” he sug­gest­ed.

He added that the “ma­jor­i­ty of the peo­ple are not hap­py with the PNM” and the MND will put up a tough fight even with lit­tle funds avail­able to the par­ty.

“We do not have an abun­dance of re­sources be­cause we are not go­ing out there and get­ting fund­ing from tra­di­tion­al re­sources. A lot of our fund­ing is com­ing out from our pock­ets and from friends who will give us what­ev­er lit­tle to help us with some t-shirts,” he said.

Nicholas con­test­ed the Diego Mar­tin North-East seat in 2010 un­der a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress tick­et. He was al­so at­tor­ney gen­er­al for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment for six months un­til the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. He de­nied want­i­ng to split votes. Three ar­eas of in­ter­est for the po­lit­i­cal par­ty is de­vel­op­ing agri­cul­ture in the com­mu­ni­ty, up­lift­ing and en­cour­ag­ing youths to ven­ture in­to the cre­ative arts and in­fra­struc­ture.

Nicholas is the MND’s can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral. The oth­er can­di­dates are agri­cul­tur­al en­tre­pre­neur Dex­ter Nicholls for Diego Mar­tin West and ex­tem­po monarch and ca­lyp­son­ian My­ron Bruce for Diego Mar­tin East.