Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“Be­ware!”

That’s the warn­ing from UNC deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Roodal Mooni­lal to prospec­tive PNM can­di­dates, af­ter the rul­ing par­ty opened nom­i­na­tions in op­po­si­tion-held con­stituen­cies.

Af­ter the PNM held screen­ings in five UNC-held con­stituen­cies on Mon­day, par­ty of­fi­cials is­sued a call for nom­i­nees for ten more UNC-held seats - Ca­roni Cen­tral, Ch­agua­nas West, Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Na­pari­ma, Oropouche East, Oropouche West, Princes Town, Tabaquite and Siparia. Those con­stituen­cies are cur­rent­ly held by Arnold Ram, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Ravi Rati­ram, Rudranath In­dars­ingh, Rod­ney Charles, Mooni­lal, Dave Tan­coo, Bar­ry Padarath, Ani­ta Haynes and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of nom­i­na­tions is Sep­tem­ber 25 at 4.30 pm and screen­ings are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the end of Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, Mooni­lal is warn­ing PN­Mites off.

“When one will­ing­ly en­ters a li­on’s den they ei­ther fall in or are pushed in,” he said.

“Ei­ther way, the out­come is the same! De­pend­ing on their form, they can serve ei­ther as an hors d’oeu­vre or an en­tree. I am say­ing when the li­on steps back it is not to re­treat as some might er­ro­neous­ly think. It is to mea­sure his jump.”

Dave Tan­coo, the MP for Oropouche West, al­so com­ment­ed on the up­com­ing PNM screen­ings.

“It’s in­ter­est­ing that the PNM is seek­ing nom­i­nees for Oropouche West and East, seats they’ve aban­doned for the last nine years. These ar­eas have lived through a com­bined cri­sis, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flood­ing, crime, un­em­ploy­ment, pover­ty and abysmal wa­ter sup­ply due to ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion by a Gov­ern­ment which now wants to get these same ar­eas to vote for them,” he said.

“Con­stituents will not for­get that elec­tions have con­se­quences. They’ve suf­fered enough at this Gov­ern­ment’s hands and they will not let the PNM for­get that too.”

Mon­day’s PNM screen­ings were for nom­i­nees in five UNC-held con­stituen­cies in north and cen­tral Trinidad. Last Fri­day, the par­ty screened nom­i­nees for four south­ern ar­eas. The par­ty had is­sued its first call for nom­i­nees in these nine ar­eas in June.

So far, five prospec­tive can­di­dates have been se­lect­ed. They are Cou­va busi­ness­man Mukesh Ram­s­ingh (Pointe-a-Pierre), Sen­a­tor Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal (St Au­gus­tine), Sen­a­tor Riche Sookhai (Ch­agua­nas East), Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Dr Muhammed Ibrahim (Barataria/San Juan) and da­ta spe­cial­ist Leena Ram­per­sad (Ca­roni East).

Com­ment­ing on the se­lec­tions, op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials sin­gled out Ram­s­ingh and Sookhai, who they ad­vised to heed the words of Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee and Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit and “Beat it as Michael Jack­son said.”

“Ibrahim isn’t known on the ground in Barataria/San Juan. Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal’s up­com­ing de­feat will be worse than the beat­ing she got from Kadi­jah Ameen in St Au­gus­tine in 2020 and we don’t even know who Leena Ram­per­sad is. Ca­roni East vot­ers on­ly know the suf­fer­ing they’ve ex­pe­ri­enced un­der PNM.”

On Mon­day, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials were sent back to seek fresh nom­i­nees af­ter two nom­i­nees were pre­sent­ed.
Re­turn­ing for screen­ing next Tues­day will be Ma­yaro. Last Fri­day, the con­stituen­cy was al­so sent back to seek more nom­i­nees af­ter four prospec­tive can­di­dates were screened.

Al­so re­turn­ing is Moru­ga/Table­land, which was sent back af­ter last week Fri­day’s screen­ing of their four nom­i­nees.

Screen­ing for Fyz­abad is al­so in­com­plete, as nom­i­nee Kheron Khan, son of for­mer MP and PNM chair­man Franklin Khan, is over­seas. The five nom­i­nees in that con­stituen­cy in­clude for­mer UNC mem­ber Ja­son Ali, coun­cil­lor for Siparia West/Fyz­abad.