Kim­ber­ly Mack­han & Yvonne Webb

Deputy Speak­er Pen­ne­lope Beck­les emerged from Bal­isi­er House last night, look­ing not to­tal­ly con­fi­dent that she will get the nod to again con­test the Ari­ma seat for the PNM. She faced a stiff chal­lenge, sources said, from PNM sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma, 28. And a num­ber of oth­er in­cum­bent can­di­da­cies re­mained in lim­bo. They in­clude To­co/San­gre Grande, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, and Ari­ma. In­dra Ojah-Ma­haraj, the To­co/San­gre Grande MP is fac­ing at least three chal­lengers–Ronald Boynes, Anil Juter­am and Er­ic Tay­lor. All have been screened. La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro MP Roger Joseph is al­so fac­ing a ma­jor chal­lenge from for­mer Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go Ken­isha Thom-Selvon. That seat was screened on Thurs­day.

In the midst of all of this came re­ports last night that Sport Min­is­ter Gary Hunt has with­drawn his can­di­da­cy for the Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West for the PNM in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. A three-para­graph, un­signed re­lease with "Hon Gary Hunt MP" typed at the bot­tom said Hunt ex­pressed his "grat­i­tude to the con­stituen­cy that I served with ded­i­ca­tion over the last two and half years." It stat­ed: "I would like to wish the new can­di­date a sound vic­to­ry. I re­main com­mit­ted to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's vi­sion and ideals." Hunt has apol­o­gised to the na­tion for putting up the $2 mil­lion na­tion­al flag at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, say­ing it was a "mis­step." Last night, Beck­les, who was not con­firmed dur­ing her screen­ing at Bal­isi­er House, told the me­dia: "I am sat­is­fied that I have served my con­stituen­cy well...I look for­ward and hope that I am se­lect­ed and I am giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve in the man­ner that I have served. "There is no de­ci­sion yet," she said.

Beck­les said she did not feel a sense of be­tray­al that Leza­ma, who helped cam­paigned for her in the past, would op­pose her to rep­re­sent the PNM Ari­ma. Beck­les said her screen­ing last­ed for about 15 min­utes. Af­ter Beck­les ex­it­ed, Leza­ma pre­sent­ed her­self to the me­dia around 7.05 pm. When asked whether she thought she was the bet­ter can­di­date for the job, Leza­ma said: "We both have our strengths, and I think that I have a lot to of­fer." Leza­ma said the screen­ing process "was a great chal­lenge" and that Beck­les had done a great ser­vice. Leza­ma suf­fered much pub­lic crit­i­cism af­ter it was re­vealed that she re­ceived about $500,000 in fund­ing from a con­tro­ver­sial Cul­ture Min­istry bur­saries pro­gramme for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. It al­lowed her to pur­sue an un­der­grad­u­ate law and pol­i­tics de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­min­ster in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Dur­ing the last elec­tions in 2007, a num­ber of in­cum­bents did not go up for re-elec­tion. They in­clud­ed Ken Val­ley, Fitzger­ald Hinds, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Jar­rette Nar­ine. Screen­ing con­tin­ues to­day, with Point Fortin MP, Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Paula Gopee-Scoon, al­so fac­ing some chal­lengers. Gopee-Scoon is fac­ing chal­lenge from three oth­er con­tenders, in­clud­ing Point Fortin May­or Vic­tor Mitchell, for­mer coun­cil­lor Ab­don Ma­son and Nigel Mi­nors, pres­i­dent of the South-West­ern Cham­ber and a Team Leader of the In­ter­na­tion­al Busi­ness Unit Lake As­phalt. A fourth con­tender, in­ter­na­tion­al ship cap­tain George Alex­is, who was al­so screened for the seat be­fore the last elec­tion, sent a let­ter to Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day, with­draw­ing his nom­i­na­tion. The Point Fortin con­tin­gent will face the screen­ing com­mit­tee at 1.30 pm to­day at Bal­isi­er House. "Point Fortin is ready for change, and if they put back the in­cum­bent, Point Fortin could lose the seat," a long-stand­ing mem­ber of the PNM said yes­ter­day.

Sup­port­ing Mi­nors, mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty told the Guardian yes­ter­day: "Point Fortin is no longer a safe seat and rep­re­sen­ta­tion is go­ing to be a fac­tor in the next elec­tion." For­mer cham­ber pres­i­dent Fran­cis Bertrand who al­so served as a May­or of Point Fortin agreed that "the for­tunes of Point Fortin are not guar­an­teed. "I cer­tain­ly think rep­re­sen­ta­tion will be a big fac­tor," Bertrand said, con­firm­ing that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the con­stituen­cy was es­tranged. Some res­i­dents, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, said there was qui­et dis­con­tent in the con­stituen­cy over the non- de­liv­ery of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture such as the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal, a high­way to Point Fortin, as well as an ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex, cul­tur­al and sport­ing cen­tres.

"Point Fortin has been clam­our­ing for prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion for years, but now that pri­or­i­ty has been giv­en for the con­struc­tion of hos­pi­tals in oth­er ar­eas, the high­way to Point Fortin has dis­ap­peared from the radar and fo­cus is now on Ma­yaro," a res­i­dent said. "The lev­el of rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the en­tire South-west­ern Penin­su­la is not what it should have been...There is a gen­er­al feel­ing of rur­al ne­glect in Point Fortin, La Brea and Fyz­abad, ar­eas where the en­er­gy re­sources are.