At­tor­ney and ac­tivist Ka­reem Mar­celle has of­fi­cial­ly con­firmed his de­sire to put him­self for­ward for the Laven­tille West seat in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.  He re­vealed the de­ci­sion was made on Oc­to­ber 28. He said his de­ci­sion comes in re­sponse to nu­mer­ous re­quests from con­stituents and a de­sire to serve his com­mu­ni­ty more ef­fec­tive­ly.

Al­though he will be di­rect­ly chal­leng­ing his fel­low PNM mem­ber, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds he said, "This in no way must be seen as an act of dis­re­spect to my con­stituen­cy’s cur­rent Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment. MP Hinds is a vet­er­an and ho­n­ourable politi­cian since 1995 (a year be­fore I was born), who con­tin­ues to ded­i­cate his life to the ser­vice of our coun­try and par­ty."

Leaked videos cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia this week showed an un­en­thu­si­as­tic group of  PNM Women's League mem­bers de­clin­ing to show sup­port for an­oth­er Fitzger­ald Hinds term as MP. The crossed arms and deaf­en­ing si­lence were an ap­par­ent show of sup­port for Mar­celle, ac­cord­ing to par­ty in­sid­ers. How­ev­er, the PNM Women's League na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive con­demned not just the leak­ing of the video, but how the meet­ing was con­duct­ed in the first place, call­ing for a new meet­ing and vote to be held. 

Nev­er­the­less, Mar­celle ex­pressed his grat­i­tude to­wards the PNM’s Laven­tille West Women’s League, say­ing, "It is my un­der­stand­ing that I re­ceived over­whelm­ing sup­port to be nom­i­nat­ed by the said Women’s League in the said meet­ing. For this sup­port, I am deeply grate­ful." He em­pha­sised that this back­ing demon­strates a col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to pos­i­tive change with­in the con­stituen­cy.

He did though, con­demn the leak­ing of the videos,  say­ing, "I strong­ly con­demn this act and en­cour­age our mem­bers to de­sist from the same." He not­ed that the in­ter­nal busi­ness of the PNM should re­main con­fi­den­tial as the videos have been sen­sa­tion­alised in the me­dia.

To be con­sid­ered for screen­ing, sev­er­al con­stituen­cy groups have to come for­ward with nom­i­na­tions for can­di­dates. Mar­celle will re­quire sup­port from oth­er groups as well, in ad­di­tion to get­ting the votes from the women's league in the new, prop­er­ly con­sti­tut­ed meet­ing, when­ev­er it is called. 

Mar­celle said, Whether I am se­lect­ed or not, I will re­main com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning the cause of my com­mu­ni­ty and es­pe­cial­ly of the young peo­ple of our great na­tion."