Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Moru­ga-Table­land Dr Lovell Fran­cis will not be re­turn­ing to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives af­ter the next gen­er­al elec­tion as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) na­tion­al screen­ing com­mit­tee head­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has re­ject­ed his can­di­da­cy.

On Sat­ur­day, Fran­cis faced the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee al­though he was the third most favoured can­di­date by the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. Af­ter Moru­ga-Table­land nom­i­nees were screened no de­ci­sion was an­nounced. In­stead, of­fi­cials from the unit were asked to meet with par­ty ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials

Sources tell Guardian Me­dia that the mem­bers of screen­ing com­mit­tee did not mince words with Fran­cis and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that five years af­ter tak­ing charge of the con­stituen­cy, he had made it more mar­gin­al and had not been able to unite the area.

Fran­cis' de­par­ture is not a ma­jor sur­prise, how­ev­er, as he has been at log­ger­heads with the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive for most of his term and was un­able to gar­ner sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive when he ap­peared be­fore them for his ini­tial screen­ing.

In a Face­book post on Tues­day morn­ing, Fran­cis ad­mit­ted it was the end of his ca­reer as MP for the area and said while things did not go to plan he had done his best.

He said: "I worked hard every day and re­gard­less of floods, the earth­quake, fires, fiery protests, col­lapsed hous­es and so on I was there, even if it meant be­ing up­braid­ed for things well be­yond my con­trol."

It ap­pears his post on things be­yond his con­trol was a ref­er­ence to the com­plaint in the con­stituen­cy that while he had brought in­fra­struc­ture projects, al­most all the con­trac­tors and work­ers were from out­side of the area.

The PNM won the seat in 2015 by 500-plus votes. At that time, Fran­cis was backed and rec­om­mend­ed for the can­di­da­cy by the ex­ec­u­tive. But this time round, of­fi­cials said the ex­ec­u­tive and ma­jor­i­ty of par­ty groups hadn’t rec­om­mend­ed Fran­cis but a re­tired teacher who worked on Fran­cis’ cam­paign in 2015 and had strong fol­low­ing in the area. There are 28 par­ty groups.

Oth­er nom­i­nees in­clud­ed a for­mer coun­cil­lor, young ac­tivist and two oth­ers (all male).

PNM of­fi­cials said it was felt that Fran­cis hadn’t been “ful­ly ef­fec­tive” in the term al­though they said he’d been ex­cel­lent with get­ting in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in the seat. They, how­ev­er, not­ed when Fran­cis en­tered as MP, the area had two coun­cil­lors and two al­der­men on the Princes Town Cor­po­ra­tion but this lat­er slid down.

In 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions, the par­ty lost all coun­cil­lors in that area and on­ly got one al­der­man. Of­fi­cials are con­cerned he “wasn’t ful­ly con­nect­ed with the con­stituen­cy’s po­lit­i­cal struc­ture.”

“There were al­so claims about at­ten­dance at con­stituen­cy and ex­ec­u­tive meet­ings. Cer­tain polls were al­so done in the area that showed the seat wasn’t get­ting the sup­port,” they added.

Con­tact­ed on the is­sue, Moru­ga con­stituen­cy chair­man David Trim de­clined com­ment, on­ly say­ing the screen­ing com­mit­tee held the ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to choose a can­di­date they had con­fi­dence in to en­sure vic­to­ry at the polls.

It is al­so un­der­stood that the PNM MP for Point Fortin, re­tired Brig Ed­mund Dil­lon, has al­so been re­ject­ed by the screen­ing com­mit­tee.

MITCHELL CON­GRU­LATES MAN­NING

Fran­cis is the sec­ond in­cum­bent MP to lose favour with their con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee thus far.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Ran­dall Mitchell al­so fell out of favour with the ex­ec­u­tive and has been re­placed by Bri­an Man­ning, son of for­mer de­ceased prime min­is­ter and par­ty leader Patrick Man­ning, for the forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Both men were screened on Sat­ur­day by the screen­ing com­mit­tee and Man­ning was giv­en the nod.

In a state­ment on Mon­day evening, Mitchell con­grat­u­lat­ed Man­ning on his se­lec­tion and said he would con­tin­ue to sup­port the par­ty to en­sure the seat was re­tained. He al­so thanked Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for al­low­ing him to serve in the Min­istries of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, Hous­ing and Tourism, and his Cab­i­net col­leagues for their sup­port dur­ing his tenure.