Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will both be in To­ba­go to­day for screen­ing of PNM can­di­dates and ce­ment­ing of UNC To­ba­go al­lies, re­spec­tive­ly. And both the rul­ing par­ty and the Op­po­si­tion UNC hit the road on Mon­day night in north and south Trinidad, re­spec­tive­ly, each with the first of their elec­tion meet­ings.

Lead­ers, MPs and par­ty of­fi­cials of each par­ty will be speak­ing on the two re­spec­tive plat­forms. Man­ning is go­ing to To­ba­go to­day for screen­ing of PNM's To­ba­go East and West nom­i­nees.

Screen­ing be­gins at PNM's To­ba­go of­fice at 9.30 am, PNM's To­ba­go Coun­cil con­firmed.

UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be in To­ba­go from 4.30 pm to meet with leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Peo­ple (TOP) Ash­worth Jack to dis­cuss TOP can­di­dates to fight the two To­ba­go seats on be­half of the UNC. Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed that UNC would not be con­test­ing the two To­ba­go seats, but was in dis­cus­sions with TOP to have an arrange­ment for elec­tion. The PNM, which has put its cot­tage meet­ings and walk­a­bouts on hold pend­ing com­ple­tion of screen­ing, will hold the first of its pub­lic cam­paign meet­ings on Mon­day night in the heart of the East-West Cor­ri­dor in St Au­gus­tine (near Hi-Lo car park). The UNC's ex­ec­u­tive on Thurs­day night al­so agreed to kick off that par­ty's elec­tion cam­paign with a pub­lic meet­ing at Gopaul Lands (near Hi-Lo) in Mara­bel­la on Mon­day night, ac­cord­ing to Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

She said state­ments which UNC MPs had pre­pared for the abort­ed no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate yes­ter­day would be is­sued at UNC meet­ings. She al­leged that the UNC had ob­tained "in­for­ma­tion" re­gard­ing the PNM Gov­ern­ment, the con­tro­ver­sial Gua­napo church and the Shang­hai Cor­po­ra­tion. Yes­ter­day, the PNM screened nom­i­nees for sev­er­al more East-West Cor­ri­dor seats, in­clud­ing D'Abadie/O'Meara, Ca­roni East, Ch­agua­nas West, St Au­gus­tine (Esau Mo­hammed, who had un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the seat), Ari­ma (in­cum­bent MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Sen­a­tor Lau­rel Leza­ma), and St Ann's East (in­cum­bent An­tho­ny Roberts).

Among the Ari­ma nom­i­nees, Beck­les was nom­i­nat­ed by 19 par­ty groups and Leza­ma by three, ac­cord­ing to Bob­by Charles, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary of PNM's Ari­ma con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive, yes­ter­day.

To­day, Man­ning who heads PNM's screen­ing team will in­ter­view To­ba­go East in­cum­bent MP Ren­nie Du­mas who has been nom­i­nat­ed by par­ty groups for the seat again. The To­ba­go West nom­i­nee is banker Ter­rence Williams, of Canaan/Bon Ac­cord, who is tipped to re­place in­cum­bent MP Stand­ford Cal­len­dar. The lat­ter did not sign a con­sent let­ter to be renom­i­nat­ed and was there­fore out of the run­ning. On Wednes­day, Cal­len­dar said in an in­ter­view that he had won the seat in gen­er­al elec­tions of 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2007, and had de­cid­ed that he would not con­test again and this would have been his last term. He said Man­ning's de­ci­sion to call an elec­tion had on­ly short­ened his term. Thank­ing his con­stituents and the rul­ing par­ty "for the faith and con­fi­dence in me over the years," Cal­len­dar added: "I have ab­solute­ly no prob­lems with the elec­tion be­ing called.

"I'll be a big part of PNM's up­com­ing cam­paign plat­form and to­geth­er with PNM's To­ba­go Coun­cil, I'll al­so be help­ing the new To­ba­go West can­di­date," he said. "I think the par­ty is mak­ing an ex­cel­lent nom­i­na­tion in Ter­rence Williams, a young man who is very in­tel­li­gent and who, in my ex­pe­ri­ence, seems com­mit­ted to ser­vice and the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple and par­ty.

"I have every con­fi­dence he'll be an ex­cel­lent re­place­ment for me in To­ba­go West." Af­ter To­ba­go screen­ing is com­plet­ed this morn­ing, the Screen­ing team re­turns to screen­ing at Bal­isi­er House in Port-of-Spain where nom­i­nees for seats, in­clud­ing Ma­yaro, will be in­ter­viewed this af­ter­noon. Ma­yaro nom­i­nees in­clude Clif­ford Camp­bell and Arvind Moo­nan. The PNM con­tin­ues screen­ing nom­i­nees next Tues­day, af­ter Mon­day's pub­lic meet­ing.

(See Pub­lic Af­fairs

.)