By Kenrick Quashie
Not everyone is an extrovert and that is OK. However, when one accepts the task of a parliamentarian, to represent a wide cross-section of people, one must be prepared to interact with them.
At the same time, you become the flag bearer for your political party for others to come.
Montgomery Daniel has been serving as the parliamentary representative for North Windward since 2001 — way too long.
Every election, without fail, Dr. Gonsalves, the most prominent politician, political leader and neighbouring parliamentarian, has had to apologise on Montgomery’s behalf. Over and over he has had to assure the people of North Windward that in order to have him as their leader, it has to be through Montgomery’s election to Parliament.
In 2005, at the end of the first term, Montgomery’s support had been so eroded that there was gerrymandering to give to North Windward a part of the North Central Windward constituency, a strong hole for ULP. Spring Village and Caratal were handed over to North Windward in order to bolster Daniel’s votes.
North Windward afforded Montgomery Daniel the opportunity to rise to the post of deputy prime minister and to act as prime minister on occasions.
This is a man who was at the bottom of the totem pole within the ULP cabinet. In 2001, when first elected, even though Daniel is a trained agronomist, both Selmon Walters and Girlyn Miguel were appointed senior ministers while he remained minister of state in the ministry of agriculture.
Daniel moved from being hardly able to string a properly structured sentence together to being elevated to the post of deputy prime minister, all because the people of North Windward continued to elect Dr. Gonsalves. The votes in North Windward for the ULP is solely because of “De Comrade”. Yet year after year, Montgomery continues to make the job harder for Dr. Gonsalves because he continues to ignore, insult and disregard his supporters and constituents.
In 2015 when he thought that it was going to be his final term, his contempt for North Windward peaked. However, as fate would have it, the ULP was unable to find a suitable candidate to contest the 2020 elections and the prime minister needed Montgomery Daniel next to him to implement his now failed succession plan post 2020 general elections. As such, he ashamedly had to return to the people of North Windward to beg for their votes in the 2020 general elections. He promised to do better. To interact with the people more. As Maury show would famously say, “That was lie”.
North Windward has given to Montgomery Daniel way more than he has given to them.
He has now made it almost impossible for the recently voted ULP candidate for North Windward, Dr. Grace Walters to stand a chance of being elected on a ULP ticket. He “kicked the proverbial bucket” after he got his share.
The ULP will do well to keep him off Grace’s platform. The challenge though is that like most politicians, his ego is so big that he would feel quite slighted if he is not allowed to mount Grace’s platform to boast about all that “he” accomplished since 2001. The more he talks, the more votes ULP will lose in North Windward.
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