Gail Alexan­der

Lopinot/Bon Air West can­di­date Mar­vin Gon­za­les will teach In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty can­di­date Jack Warn­er what it feels like to lose his $5,000 de­posit in that seat in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

PNM cam­paign man­ag­er Ro­han Sinanan is­sued the chal­lenge at last night’s Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment Tu­na­puna meet­ing.

“Mar­vin will teach Austin Jack Warn­er what it feels like to lose his de­posit in Mon­day’s elec­tion," Sinanan said.

“Mar­vin, we won’t ac­cept any­thing less from you, save that you en­sure Warn­er’s $5,000 de­posit and his con­tri­bu­tion to con­test the seat re­mains in the Trea­sury."

Sinanan said Mon­day’s elec­tion is one of the most crit­i­cal any­one in Trinidad and To­ba­go will ever par­tic­i­pate in.

“It’s about who will keep you alive and safe and af­ter COVID, who will en­sure we have a fu­ture to look for­ward to," Sinanan.

"Oth­er peo­ple have plans and man­i­festoes they change overnight. They talk about domes to pro­tect you from COVID but then they say 'Leh we change that’. It shows they make up their plans as they go along.

“I speak to every­one be­yond this meet­ing - this elec­tion is not about vot­ing tra­di­tion­al­ly if your fa­ther nev­er vot­ed PNM. In this elec­tion, you have to vote for your­self and your chil­dren’s fu­ture.’’

Sinanan asked peo­ple to think of jobs to come from projects hand­ed over in Moru­ga and oth­er sites and jobs to come in To­co, the La Brea dry dock­ing fa­cil­i­ty and To­ba­go with a mar­itime plan. He said there were so many plans to speak about he couldn’t do it at the meet­ing, as the length of time it might take “... would be a sev­en night’s Ra­mayan."

Lopinot can­di­date Gon­za­les ear­li­er re­vealed he’d been a po­lice of­fi­cer and a mem­ber of the Spe­cial An­ti Crime Unit which had re­duced crime lev­els - but it was dis­man­tled by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion. He said the UNC's ini­tial Lopinot can­di­date had been an em­ploy­ee of Warn­er who’d en­tered the race af­ter that can­di­date was re­placed.

Gon­za­les said Warn­er’s en­try to the race was a mark of dis­re­spect to the youth since he claimed Warn­er’s name had been called in “all kinds of scan­dals”, but he (Gon­za­les) said he would stand for moral­i­ty in pub­lic life.

Among at­ten­dees at the meet­ing was for­mer PNM Tu­na­puna MP Ed­die Hart.

Sinanan, laud­ing Tu­na­puna can­di­date Es­mond Forde - a one­time coun­cil­lor for the area - said some­one from the con­stituen­cy had to rep­re­sent res­i­dents.

“You can’t para­chute in and rep­re­sent us,’’ he said.

Sinanan said St Au­gus­tine can­di­date Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal was al­so an­oth­er PNM suc­cess sto­ry, since she’d in­di­cat­ed since 2015 she was in­ter­est­ed in pol­i­tics.