A con­fi­dent-sound­ing in­cum­bent Diego Mar­tin West MP, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, says he was "nev­er wor­ried" about be­ing se­lect­ed to con­test the May 24 polls. Row­ley said this af­ter fil­ing his nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for the same seat at Pt Cumana Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre in Care­nage yes­ter­day. Row­ley and scores of sup­port­ers walked with out­go­ing To­ba­go West MP, Stan­ford Cal­len­der, and steel­band mu­sic to the cen­tre, short­ly be­fore 11 am. "I was nev­er wor­ried, be­cause there was noth­ing to wor­ry about," he said in an in­ter­view with re­porters.

"The de­ci­sion was al­ways there with the po­lit­i­cal leader and the par­ty lead­er­ship, and I was con­fi­dent that the wish­es of the par­ty mem­ber­ship and the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty would have been tak­en in­to ac­count." Dur­ing the last term in of­fice, Row­ley was very crit­i­cal of Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, over his han­dling of the con­tro­ver­sial Ude­cott af­fair. Asked if he would main­tain the same crit­i­cal po­si­tion if the PNM were to win the elec­tion, Row­ley replied: "Prin­ci­ples are not sup­posed to be vari­able. I stand on prin­ci­ples; I like to be fair, bal­anced, rea­son­able and re­spect­ful." Min­utes ear­li­er, Dr Row­ley's main chal­lenger, Rocky Gar­cia of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, ac­com­pa­nied by his cam­paign man­ag­er and broth­er, Ricky Gar­cia, filed his pa­pers to con­test the seat for the May 24 polls.

He said he was pleased that he was part of the moves by op­po­si­tion par­ties to es­tab­lish a unit­ed ef­fort to re­move the PNM. "I am here for the clean pol­i­tics, new pol­i­tics, new era of pol­i­tics," he added. Row­ley had to wait out­side the cen­tre for al­most 30 min­utes, as the can­di­date for the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV), Saale­ha Abu Bakr, filed her pa­pers. She did not speak with re­porters. But Row­ley said he would re­tain his seat.

Asked to com­ment on the con­tro­ver­sy over his al­leged re­fusal to speak dur­ing the launch of the par­ty's cam­paign on Sun­day in Wood­ford Square, Row­ley said: "That's yes­ter­day's news. We're speak­ing on Thurs­day night." He said at the Four Roads meet­ing on Thurs­day, he would an­swer all com­ments and crit­i­cisms made against him.