ALLANA Mais, mother of Khajeel Mais, who was murdered in July 2011, said yesterday that she was not seeking to gain political advantage from her son’s murder trial.

Mais, who will be contesting the local government election for the first time, representing the People’s National Party in the Norbrook Division, dismissed suggestions that she was using her son’s murder trial to launch her political career.

“I have offered myself as a representative of the People’s National Party long before the case came up for trial. I have been on the ground and I have been a people person; being a representative has nothing to do with the death of my child and I want to make it absolutely clear,” Mais told the Jamaica Observer before she was nominated at the Mamby Park Baptist Church in St Andrew.

According to Mais, she was approached from October 2013 and it took her a while to decide, but said she responded in the positive because she saw the need.

“I grew up in PNP family and it was easy for me to make the decision to help the PNP. I see it as a noble movement to align myself; I see where I can assist the youths in my area, make a difference to the women who are unemployed to find some form of innovative ways to create employment and to empower themselves and to engage myself in social outreach for neglected people in the division,” she said.

Mais, who has expressed confidence based on positive feedback from people in the division, is going up against incumbent Susan Senior of the Jamaica Labour Party.

Khajeel was shot dead on July 1, 2011 while travelling in a taxi in Havendale. Businessman Patrick Powell, who was arrested and charged with the murder, was freed of the charge last month after the prosecution offered no evidence against him in the trial.