Esther: I’ll serve curry duck

At the launch of her campaign for the key marginal seat, at Exodus Panyard in Tunapuna on Friday, the former MP said that Mr Dookeran could not win the seat.

She questioned why Dookeran had given his St Augustine safe-seat to COP candidate Prakash Ramadhar to fight the PNM-held marginal Tunapuna seat.

Le Gendre said, “They sent Dookeran here to lose because now that their prodigal son has (allegedly) returned to the UNC they put him in a safe-seat, and fed Dookeran a line that his stature alone could win Tunapuna.”

She alleged Mr Dookeran believes that line.

“Why else would the leader of the COP, who is known to avoid political risks at any cost, come to Tunapuna?” She said he does not live in Tunapuna. “They sent Dookeran here to lose, and lose he must. When offered what should be a sacred opportunity to represent the people of Tunapuna, he said , ‘Seat doesn’t matter’ – take that, from a man who is now asking for your vote.”

Le Gendre said Mr Dookeran disrespects the constituency and has no interest in representing anybody. “When he was MP for Chaguanas, he was MP for ten years and what did the people of Chaguanas get from his representation? Nothing. In 1991 when he came for their vote, they rejected him and he was soundly beaten by a woman. On May 24, he will again be beaten by a woman.”

Le Gendre then hit the UNC/COP-led coalition as “a pick-up side playing a set of used up veterans and some never-run, nothing neophytes”.

She urged voters not to take a chance on the coalition, saying Government is not a bran tub, nor a lotto.

Hitting UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, she said, “Take a chance on what, ladies and gentlemen? A political leader with no track-record of delivery with an identity issue – sometimes Hilary Clinton, sometimes Mother Theresa or worse yet Celine Dion brandishing a three-canal.”

Le Gendre accused Persad-Bissessar of destroying the political careers of those MPs who had not backed her in the UNC elections.

“Take a chance on what, ladies and gentlemen? A cosmetic association of parties that has yet to demonstrate that they have any common policy position, far less a plan of how they will run this country.”

Le Gendre said in the past four months, three coalition governments have crumbled, namely in Iceland, Netherlands and Belgium. “Coalition governments everywhere have no history of stability,” she said, saying Italians virtually go to the polls every Monday to elect a new government.

“This alliance in Trinidad and Tobago, cemented by nothing more than ink and spit and a desire to unseat the PNM has even less of a chance,” she said, adding that one must also consider the history of the partners in the coalition and their relationships which are very important.

Le Gendre recalled former MP and now UNC candidate for Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal once criticising Persad-Bissessar as “pagal” (or mad, in Hindi), while the UNC’s Pointe-a-Pierre candidate Errol McLeod had once slammed the COP’s Prakash Ramadhar and the UNC’s former Couva South MP Kelvin Ramnath as “coward mice”. She said the UNC-led coalition is devoid of proper breeding and morality.

Speaking as Education Minister, Le Gendre said she had de-shifted junior secondary schools, decentralised her ministry to four regions, built 21 new Early Care and Childhood Education (ECCE) centres and upgraded many others, arranged a $400 million loan to build 100 more ECCE centre, built eight new primary schools, and refurbished 60 percent of secondary schools, among other things.