Cummings tells storm victims to record ‘fat lady’ who asks about their politics

West Kingstown MP, Daniel Cummings is encouraging his hurricane-affected constituents to record their conversation with “a fat lady” who he says is questioning them about their political allegiance.

“I thought about this long and hard and I will say publicly tonight because the money is your money. When you go before that fat woman use your phone and record the conversation between you and she,” Cummings said at the “Season to Reason” meeting of the New Democratic Party in Largo Height.

“Use your phone and record the conversation. Let the world hear what you have to do to try to get your house fixed,” he said on Saturday.

“Of all the dozens of people in West Kingston whose homes were damaged, they’re still not fixing them. After we approved all this money,” Cummings said, referring to people affected by the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 1.

He said some constituents had patched back up their roofs.

“They tell them they’re on their own, even though the house leaking like hell because they use back the damaged galvanise. They tell them that they’re not dealing with them. How could a set the people be so damn wicked and evil? That is ULP style,” Cummings said. 

He noted that he had said at another NDP campaign event in Georgetown Friday night that “we must recreate a society where the pain of our neighbour becomes our pain. 

“We must not laugh at the frustration and the agony of those who don’t see eye to eye with us politically, we must bring our country back to one,” the opposition MP said.

“We cannot go forward as a people, We cannot grow as a country, unless and until we work together as one in the name of God. one. That is what a New Democratic Party stands for,” he said. 

Cummings, a former manager of the Central Water and Sewerage Authority, said he was an engineer in the entity in 1984 when Labour was in office.

“Every day for the first time, when they ring the bell, the ministers calling and coming, they want a standpipe here, they want a standpipe there, they want a little water extension there. You never saw them before until election come,” he said.

Cummings contrasted this to what he said the situation was after the NDP won in 1984.

“… every single week of every year, the government ministers came to us requesting extension of water in every nook and cranny in St. Vincent and the Grenadines so much so that when in 1989 the election came, the CWSA was the most quiet place,” Cummings said at the campaign event Saturday night.

“… the government ministers didn’t need to call us. They did the work throughout the five years,” he said.

“This set of clowns we have for government, all they do is mamaguy you. They leave you to catch hell for five years, and then they will come.”

He noted that the Parliament authorized the government to borrow millions of dollars to help people affected by Hurricane Beryl.

“But what do they do? The people of West Kingstown have to go to a fat lady and talk about they party politics to try to get help to fix their house,” Cummings said. 

“That is criminal behaviour, because it’s public funds. It is public funds. Why should an unelected person be determining who should get help? Why it should be a politician?” the MP said. 

He said these decisions should be made by public servants who should administer the money and “give the money where the pain is.

“That is how NDP did it and that is how NDP will do it again. It’s our money. People must not go and beg in the hope of getting the house fixed when everybody knows that Beryl blew off their house roof and everybody knows that the government borrowed money to help to fix your house” he said.

“But you have to go and tell people that you supporting red, otherwise you’re dead,” Cumming said, adding that this must stop.