Sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal heavy­weights for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ar­rived for screen­ing yes­ter­day with full the­atri­cal dis­plays and mu­sic, along with throngs of sup­port­ers.

Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, the in­cum­bent Oropouche East MP, ar­rived at the UNC head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas, sur­round­ed by sup­port­ers chip­ping to the rolling rhythms of tas­sa drums and sounds blast­ing from a mu­sic truck, as he pre­pared to present him­self be­fore the par­ty’s screen­ing com­mit­tee ahead of the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Mooni­lal, who was on­ly re­cent­ly named in a fresh cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tion in the on­go­ing Es­tate Man­age­ment and Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EM­BD) court mat­ter, walked in­to the head­quar­ters with a broad smile, greet­ing his sup­port­ers.

Oth­er prospec­tive can­di­dates al­so went all out to im­press.

A danc­ing drag­on ac­com­pa­nied in­cum­bent Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee as he ar­rived to face the par­ty’s screen­ing com­mit­tee.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that Lee was not the sole con­tender for the con­stituen­cy, which he has rep­re­sent­ed since 2015.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ex­pect­ed to be the sole nom­i­nee screened for Siparia, a con­stituen­cy she has served in for three decades.

For Princes Town, Deryck Mathu­ra will be go­ing up against in­cum­bent MP Bar­ry Padarath. Par­ty sources said at least five peo­ple were ex­pect­ed to present them­selves be­fore the par­ty’s screen­ing com­mit­tee for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, a seat present­ly held by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Fos­ter Cum­mings.

While the PNM has al­ready named 37 can­di­dates, the UNC has con­firmed eight so far.

Those seats con­firmed are Aran­juez/St Joseph (De­vesh Ma­haraj); Arou­ca/Lopinot (Dr Na­tal­ie Chai­tan-Ma­haraj), Barataria/San Juan (Sad­dam Ho­sein); Ch­agua­nas East (Van­dana Mo­hit); San Fer­nan­do East (John Michael Al­i­bo­cas); San Fer­nan­do West (Dr Michael Dowlath); To­co/San­gre Grande (Wayne Sturge) and Trinci­ty/Mal­oney (Richard Smith).

Up to 7 pm, the screen­ing process was yet to start, as the UNC treat­ed its sup­port­ers to a cul­tur­al show which saw per­for­mances from Nisha B and Swap­pi.

—Jesse Ramdeo