Chaguanas councillor Faaiq Mohammed is predicting that Jack Warner’s Independent Liberal Party (ILP), from which he defected, will not last a year. His claim comes in the wake of the resignation, on Tuesday, of former ILP interim chairman Robin Montano days before the party’s convention this weekend. “The ILP cannot last a year,” Mohammed, councillor for Charlieville on the Chaguanas Borough Corporation, told the T&T Guardian after the corporation’s first statutory meeting on Tuesday.
Mohammed said on a visit to perceived ILP strongholds, such as St Thomas Village and New Settlement, residents indicated they were leaving the party because it had diverted from its original position of representation. “A lot of them are waking up,” Mohammed said. “More people are going back (to the UNC) and if the ILP lasts up to 2015, I don’t believe it can win the Chaguanas West seat. People are dissatisfied with the ILP.”
He said people on the ground were telling him the ILP was formed out of bitterness and was just a way to malign the present government. Commenting on Montano’s resignation, Mohammed recalled, “Robin Montano called me a liar, and here it is today he woke up and smelled the coffee and left that party for the same reason I hastily got out.” Mohammed suggested Montano’s resignation was “only the tip of the iceberg. People will leave in droves.”
But he said he would not be consumed by what is happening in or with the ILP. “My main concern is not the bacchanal in the ILP. I am here to serve the people, serve the people, serve the people and deliver.” After the statutory meeting, deputy mayor Debideen Mannick said the corporation had decided to distribute resources equitably among all councillors. “We want all our burgesses to be represented on the same playing field,” he said.
“I see no party politics here. All I see are people who want the goods delivered and I want that too. I am about honesty and integrity.”