Gail Alexan­der

On­ly one of the UNC's two Par­tap fam­i­ly mem­bers who were screened for seats will be a can­di­date in the up­com­ing elec­tion, in­formed UNC sources con­firmed yes­ter­day.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will choose be­tween in­cum­bent Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Har­ry Par­tap, who was nom­i­nat­ed to de­fend his seat, or his son Collin, who was nom­i­nat­ed for the Princes Town seat. The younger Par­tap, an at­tor­ney, is a fron­trun­ner for the Princes Town seat. Yes­ter­day, the el­der Par­tap said: "I'm 68 years, but who­ev­er the par­ty puts as a can­di­date I will work with them to en­sure we beat the PNM." Sources said the UNC top brass have ruled out hav­ing two fam­i­ly mem­bers on UNC's can­di­date team. The UNC, which has em­barked on a uni­ty arrange­ment with four part­ners for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, is con­test­ing 24 seats. The oth­er 17 seats are be­ing con­test­ed by the par­ty's part­ners in op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing COP, NJAC, To­ba­go's TOP and the labour-root­ed MSJ. An­nounce­ments, re­gard­ing can­di­dates and arrange­ments for the 17 seats, are ex­pect­ed at tonight's first meet­ing in Fyz­abad of the uni­ty plat­form, The UNC was meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the four groups at Emer­ald Plaza, St Au­gus­tine, yes­ter­day from 6 pm to fi­nalise the seat arrange­ments.

A spokesman said COP, for in­stance, had not fi­nalised can­di­dates, al­though ten seats for the COP were de­cid­ed on. They added that in the seat al­lo­ca­tion, the COP had ob­tained ten East-West Cor­ri­dor seats, in­clud­ing St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna. A top-lev­el UNC of­fi­cial said yes­ter­day COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an "may be get­ting a safe seat." That is­sue was be­ing fi­nalised at last night's meet­ing. COP of­fi­cials have said Dook­er­an does not "want a safe seat giv­en to him" as such. How­ev­er, pres­sure is mount­ing by UNC's St Au­gus­tine mem­bers to en­sure in­cum­bent MP Vas­ant Bharath was re­turned as the can­di­date there. Bharath was screened for the seat last week along with coun­cil­lor Kadi­jah Amin. Yes­ter­day, UNC St Au­gus­tine con­stituen­cy chair­man Kathy Ann Hill said a 1,500-sig­na­ture pe­ti­tion in sup­port of Bharath was col­lect­ed by the unit.

Hill said: "This was just a ran­dom spot sur­vey and sig­na­ture col­lec­tion dri­ve done in one day and we got so many sig­na­tures. Mr Bharath is very pop­u­lar in the seat since he helps peo­ple from all over, not on­ly in this con­stituen­cy. "We are al­so gaug­ing the sen­ti­ment of the St Au­gus­tine busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty on this and we will be get­ting a let­ter from them to send to the UNC screen­ing com­mit­tee along with the pe­ti­tion." In the UNC's uni­ty arrange­ment, the 17 seats, which would not be con­test­ed by UNC, would be di­vid­ed up among the four ag­gre­ga­tions. The UNC would con­test its heart­land south and cen­tral seats plus nine oth­ers re­gard­ed as mar­gin­al, in­clud­ing St Joseph and San Fer­nan­do West, UNC of­fi­cials said. Nom­i­nees for St Joseph are still be­ing scru­ti­nised.

It was con­firmed yes­ter­day the al­lo­ca­tion of the oth­er 17 seats would be as fol­lows:

�2 MSJ: Pointe a Pierre (Er­rol McLeod);

�2 NJAC: Laven­tille West (Makan­dal Daa­ga), Laven­tille East, Port-of Spain South and Pt Fortin;

�2 TOP: To­ba­go East (Vanel­la Al­lan Top­pin) and To­ba­go West (Dr Del­mond Bak­er); and,

�2 COP: ten East/West Cor­ri­dor seats from Ari­ma, Tu­na­puna, St Au­gus­tine, D'Abadie/O'Meara, Lopinot/Bon Air, PoS North, Arou­ca Mal­oney to Diego Mar­tin West and Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral.

While MSJ's Er­rol McLeod is tipped for Pointe-a Pierre, yes­ter­day dis­cus­sions still were be­ing fi­nalised on whether MSJ's David Ab­du­lah would con­test any oth­er seat. On the UNC side, those tipped for seats, sources said, in­clud­ed sev­er­al in­cum­bents (Siparia MP Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar, Fyz­abad's Chan­dresh Shar­ma, Oropouche East's Roodal Mooni­lal) as well as sug­ar union leader Rudy In­dars­ingh (Cou­va South), at­tor­ney Garvin Nicholas (Diego Mar­tin North­east), Dr Fuad Khan (San Juan/Barataria),

For­mer COP mem­bers De­vant Ma­haraj (nom­i­nat­ed for Cou­va South) and Anand Ram­lo­gan (Tabaquite), who left that par­ty to re­turn to UNC, have been de­layed in screen­ing since they have been UNC mem­bers less than a year, a spokesman said. How­ev­er, Ma­haraj ob­tained a le­gal opin­ion from Eng­lish Queen's Coun­sel Alan New­man, he said yes­ter­day. UNC con­tin­ues screen­ing for Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Hamza Rafeeq's seat and a few oth­er ar­eas to­day.