Woman in protest against Regrello: 'PNM till I dead'

JOVANNE Edmund, the woman who led the protest against Junia Regrello's having a second term as mayor of San Fernando, is denying any affiliation with the United National Congress (UNC), as Regrello has charged.

Edmund told the Newsday on Tuesday, “I was born a PNM and I will die a PNM.”

She said she cast her vote in the December 2 local government elections for Ryaad Hosein, brother of Local Government Minister Kazim Hosein, and worked as a polling agent for the PNM's Mon Repos candidate Nigel Couttier.

“Regrello knows this, but they are harping on me wearing a yellow UNC jersey.”

Regrello has since said he is no longer interested in serving a second term, owing to family commitments. The PNM is looking at former deputy mayor Vidia Mungal-Bissessar and attonery Solange De Souza-Ransome as a possible replacement.

Reacting to a photograph of her in a UNC jersey, posing for a picture with Sachin Maharaj, the defeated UNC candidate for the Les Efforts East/Cipero electoral district in which she lives, Edmund said it was not the first time she had worn a political T-shirt that was not PNM.

“God says render your heart, not your garment.

“I know plenty PNM people who have Kamla (opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar) teacup in their office and in their homes.

“A person has freedom of choice to put on any colour jersey and go to any rally or cottage meeting to listen to what the other party is saying. But they are focusing me on this yellow jersey and not on the three seats they lost under Regrello and Faris Al-Rawi reign.”

She denied that either PNM councillor for Pleasantville Robert Parris nor Maharaj had anything to do with her protest.

“That boy (Maharaj) – I don’t know how he got my number, but he called me and I agreed to meet him, because there is nothing wrong with meeting somebody and hearing what he had to say.

"But once we met, I laid the cards on the table and told him I was a PNM.”

She said Parris was a decent person of integrity and if he could help someone he would, and if he couldn't he would say so, unlike other members of the council.

Edmund said she decided to come forward to clear her name after being accused of taking payment to do "a hack job" on Regrello.

She said the reason she took a placard to city hall and advocated for the PNM not to select Regrello for a second term was because he “lied about his son working at the San Fernando City Corporation.”

The issue of the children of senior officials being employed by the SFCC while attending university was raised on a UNC platform during the LGE campaign by opposition MP Dr Roodal Moonilal.

Regrello denied his son Joshua, a UWI law student, was ever employed by the SFCC, but remained silent on the employment of his other son, Nicholas, until cheques later surfaced as evidence that he was in fact employed there.

“Nobody would kill you to say your son working in the corporation," said Edmund. "Why lie? Why lie? Come out plain and say so. The same way your son could eat a food, other people could eat a food too."

She said that was the basis of her protest.

“I went there alone to stage my protest and was joined by two or three other people. I don’t know them and I don’t know anything about them being paid to protest,” she said in reference to another protester, who has since made a video apologising to the mayor for his part in the protest.