Gail Alexan­der

With Nom­i­na­tion Day 11 days away, sev­er­al UNC nom­i­nees are await­ing word af­ter screen­ing and some con­stituen­cies–in­clud­ing Cou­va North and South–are still to be screened.

Nom­i­na­tion Day for the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion is May 3. The rul­ing PNM com­plet­ed screen­ing last week. UNC's screen­ing be­gan over a week ago and ini­tial pro­jec­tions were that ten ar­eas would have been screened over a pe­ri­od of four to five days. But screen­ing was put on hold in­ter­mit­tent­ly as UNC lead­ers who head the screen­ing team dealt with uni­ty ne­go­ti­a­tions. Of­fi­cials pro­ject­ed screen­ing may be com­plet­ed this week­end. They said the large num­ber of nom­i­nees forth­com­ing al­so was re­spon­si­ble for the de­lay. The UNC would con­test 24 seats in the uni­ty arrange­ment. The oth­er 17 are be­ing con­test­ed by the COP–which has ten–NJAC, MSJ and To­ba­go's TOP which has two. UNC of­fi­cials said con­stituen­cies, which were screened first, and fi­nalised, were those held by lead­er­ship and ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar (SIparia); Ch­agua­nas West (Jack Warn­er); Oropouche East (Roodal Mooni­lal); San Juan (Fuad Khan) and Ma­yaro (Win­ston Pe­ters). Al­so screened and ap­proved was Clifton de Coteau for Princes Town South. This leaves over ten seats still to be fi­nalised, of­fi­cials said. Yes­ter­day, Ca­roni East and Tabaquite of­fi­cials were among those still await­ing word fol­low­ing the screen­ing of nom­i­nees for those ar­eas.

Those in the run­ning for Tabaquite are in­cum­bent Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, Petrotrin en­gi­neer Ravi Rati­ram and for­mer COP mem­ber Anand Ram­lo­gan. Ma­haraj has ob­ject­ed to Ram­lo­gan's in­volve­ment, say­ing the UNC's con­sti­tu­tion does not al­low can­di­da­cy by per­sons who have not been par­ty mem­bers for less than a year. UNC's Tabaquite ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Hen­ry Awong said yes­ter­day: "We would like an idea of who the can­di­date is since we have to get the can­di­date on the ground to meet peo­ple. "We've done work to­wards mo­bil­is­ing but Nom­i­na­tion Day is in just over ten days time and we would need to take the per­son around." Awong said the ex­ec­u­tive was will­ing to work with who­ev­er the par­ty chose for Tabaquite "in the in­ter­est of the par­ty and coun­try." Ca­roni East of­fi­cials al­so said they want­ed to know whether in­cum­bent MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh had been suc­cess­ful in screen­ing over nom­i­nee Anil Ram­nar­ine who is the con­stituen­cy chair­man. One of­fi­cial said: "It's ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary for us to find out soon since we have to do some work on the ground as the MP has not al­ways been around." Al­so wait­ing word is Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, where nom­i­nees are in­cum­bent Har­ry Par­tap, one-time MP Kr­ish Ju­rai and Sav­it­ri Lochan.

Par­tap's son, Col­in, is among nine nom­i­nees screened for Princes Town and await­ing word. The oth­er sev­en nom­i­nees in­clude in­cum­bent Sub­has Pan­day and one-time MP Reeza Mo­hammed. The UNC lead­er­ship has ruled out hav­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers on the can­di­date team. Con­stituen­cies which have not been screened yet in­clude Cou­va North, Cou­va South, Ch­agua­nas East, Oropouche West, St Joseph and Ca­roni Cen­tral, San Fer­nan­do East. Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Hamza Rafeeq's con­stituen­cy sec­re­tari­at was among those which con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion. Those in the run­ning for Ch­agua­nas East in­clud­ed foot­ball ref­er­ee Ramesh Ram­dan, coun­cil­lor Gopaul Boodan and con­trac­tor R Ali,

For Cou­va North are for­mer jour­nal­ist Sunil Ramjits­ingh and UNC deputy leader Su­ruj Ram­bachan. Ramjits­ingh, who grew up in Cou­va North, has chaired the care­tak­er team work­ing the seat in the last two years.

Ram­bachan was nom­i­nat­ed by Or­lan­do Nages­sar, for­mer chair­man of UNC's Cou­va North con­stituen­cy, who served un­der Ram­bachan when the lat­ter was Ch­agua­nas may­or. Those await­ing screen­ing for Cou­va South are in­cum­bent MP Kelvin Ram­nath, UNC deputy leader Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit, for­mer COP mem­ber De­vant Ma­haraj, at­tor­ney Dave Per­sad, sug­ar union leader Rudy In­dars­ingh and Rudy Nar­i­nesingh. Sources said care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion would be giv­en in screen­ing for lo­ca­tions like Cou­va South and Tabaquite, where for­mer COP mem­bers who have not been UNC mem­bers for a year, are in­volved. Sole nom­i­nee screened for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Garvin Nicholas, who dis­solved his fledg­ling MND par­ty to join the UNC in Jan­u­ary, said he had been a "life­time mem­ber of the UNC." Al­though St Au­gus­tine MP Vas­ant Bharath was screened for the seat, along with Kadi­jah Amin, he has not been told any­thing so far, his ex­ec­u­tive con­firmed. The COP was giv­en St Au­gus­tine to con­test in the uni­ty arrange­ment.