Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Af­ter mas­quer­aders’ hec­tic two-day “Pardy,” the po­lit­i­cal par­ties re­sume ac­tiv­i­ty from to­day with sub­mis­sion of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Tabaquite gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nees ahead.

This was con­firmed by PNM of­fi­cials over the week­end.

The PNM, which has se­lect­ed 40 prospec­tive can­di­dates for the 41 con­stituen­cies, an­nounced on Feb­ru­ary 17 that it was re­quest­ing new nom­i­nees for Tabaquite in two weeks from that date. That was to re­place the ini­tial prospec­tive can­di­date Anil Ramjit, who was shelved by the par­ty.

Soon af­ter the de­vel­op­ment was an­nounced, ap­proach­es were made by the PNM’s Tabaquite unit to a hand­ful of in­di­vid­u­als on pos­si­ble nom­i­na­tion. Tabaquite PNM sources said the field was be­ing nar­rowed down to a fe­male pro­fes­sion­al and they ex­pect­ed screen­ing when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­turns from his US vis­it.

Mean­while, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which com­plet­ed screen­ing last week, is ex­pect­ed to shift fo­cus to oil­ing po­lit­i­cal ma­chin­ery, in­clud­ing mo­bil­i­sa­tion and analy­sis of can­di­dates, and con­tin­u­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of de­ci­sions to be made on can­di­dates for some ar­eas. While the UNC is con­test­ing 39 Trinidad seats, it has on­ly an­nounced eight can­di­dates so far. UNC of­fi­cials said they ex­pect­ed that some more can­di­dates will be an­nounced ahead. They shrugged off crit­i­cisms of the par­ty’s op­er­a­tions made re­cent­ly by so-called dis­si­dent Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly. Ram­bal­ly had been screened for the seat - along with sev­er­al oth­er nom­i­nees - in Jan­u­ary but with­drew his nom­i­na­tion, which he had filed in April 2024, lodg­ing a num­ber of ac­cu­sa­tions at the par­ty and lead­er­ship, from di­vi­sive racial rhetoric to un­pro­fes­sion­al­ism and poor judge­ment. But UNC of­fi­cials claimed Ram­bal­ly “made his choic­es” long ago ... the par­ty’s process­es are mov­ing on.”