With the search for a new T&T's Pres­i­dent heat­ing up, sur­pris­ing­ly a young con­tender has emerged. He is High Court judge Frank Seep­er­sad. The T&T Guardian learned yes­ter­day that the judge is be­ing con­sid­ered as a Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment nom­i­nee for the post of pres­i­dent, which be­comes va­cant next month when the term of in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards's ends.

At 40, Seep­er­sad will be the youngest nom­i­nee for the post of the high­est of­fice in T&T. Seep­er­sad, who was ap­point­ed to the ju­di­cia­ry last April, is the fa­ther of one and for­mer pres­i­dent of the As­sem­bly of South­ern Lawyers. It is un­der­stood that he is be­ing looked at be­cause Cab­i­net is seek­ing to in­fuse youth in­to the of­fice of the pres­i­dent, which is of­ten been oc­cu­pied by more ma­ture per­sons. Seep­er­sad al­so has no po­lit­i­cal ties.

Seep­er­sad, when con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, de­clined com­ment. "I am un­able to speak to the me­dia," he said. At present, Seep­er­sad pre­sides in the civ­il courts. If he is to be of­fered as a nom­i­nee for elec­tion as pres­i­dent, he would have to re­sign from the ju­di­cia­ry.

Seep­er­sad joins Speak­er Wade Mark, for­mer head of British Pe­tro­le­um (BPTT) Robert Ri­ley and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Hamid Ghany, all of whom have been tipped as pos­si­ble can­di­dates for the post. Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie are re­port­ed­ly al­so be­ing con­sid­ered. Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal was con­tact­ed via text mes­sage to his cell­phone for com­ment. He replied, via SMS was: "I did not hear that."

Who is Frank Seep­er­sad?

Frank Seep­er­sad is a south-based de­fence and civ­il at­tor­ney. He is the son of for­mer mag­is­trate and deputy Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions Clyde Seep­er­sad. He is mar­ried to Camille Ramkhelawan, a fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er at Re­pub­lic Bank. They have a five-year-old daugh­ter.

Seep­er­sad grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with up­per sec­ond-class ho­n­ours and the Hugh Wood­ing Law School in 1996. He was named the sec­ond most out­stand­ing stu­dent. He al­so grad­u­at­ed from the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics in 1997 with an LLM in in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty/al­ter­na­tive dis­pute res­o­lu­tion and civ­il lit­i­ga­tion and topped the in­ter­na­tion­al LLM class. He re­ceived the most out­stand­ing stu­dent prize.

He has prac­tised law for the past 15 years. He start­ed as an as­so­ciate at­tor­ney at Hamel-Smith and Co in No­vem­ber 1997 and moved in­to pri­vate prac­tice in 1998 at Seep­er­sad and Seep­er­sad, his fam­i­ly's law firm. In March 2012 he re­signed from pri­vate prac­tice to take up an ap­point­ment at the Ju­di­cia­ry as a civ­il judge.

Last year, Seep­er­sad be­came the youngest at­tor­ney to be ap­point­ed to the bench. Among the mat­ters he presided over was the con­tro­ver­sial ex­tra­di­tion of Bal­ram "Ba­lo" Ma­haraj's com­mon-law wife, Doreen Alexan­der-Du­ri­ty, last year. He is cur­rent­ly pre­sid­ing over the Yasin Abu Bakr civ­il law­suit against the State, in which the Ja­maat-al Mus­limeen is seek­ing dam­ages for false im­pris­on­ment and ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion. Bakr's civ­il tri­al is set to be­gin in March.

Past pres­i­dents

T&T's first pres­i­dent un­der the re­pub­li­can con­sti­tu­tion was Sir El­lis Clarke, who served from Sep­tem­ber 24, 1976 to March 19, 1987, and he was fol­lowed by Pres­i­dent Noor Has­sanali, who oc­cu­pied of­fice from March 20, 1987 to March 17, 1997.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Arthur Napoleon Ray­mond Robin­son be­came this coun­try's third pres­i­dent, serv­ing from March 18, 1997 to March 16, 2003.

Richards, this coun­try's fourth pres­i­dent, was elect­ed in 2003 and has been serv­ing to date. He is the first head of state in the An­glo­phone Caribbean of Amerindi­an an­ces­try.

The pro­ce­dure

Last week, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed an­nounced that a meet­ing of the elec­toral col­lege will be con­vened on Feb­ru­ary 15–three days af­ter Car­ni­val–for the elec­tion of a new pres­i­dent to re­place Richards.

The elec­toral col­lege is made up of all the mem­bers of the Sen­ate and the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It is con­vened by the speak­er and its pro­ce­dure is gov­erned by the elec­toral col­lege reg­u­la­tion 1976, made un­der Sec­tion 28:04 of the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion.

Mo­hammed said in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 26:04 of the con­sti­tu­tion, an elec­tion for pres­i­dent shall be held not more than 60 days nor less than 30 days be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the term of that of­fice. The elec­tion thus must be be­tween Jan­u­ary 17 and Feb­ru­ary 18.