Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple Ari­ma MP Rodger Samuel, who’s re­signed from the COP, has now sub­mit­ted a nom­i­na­tion to con­test Ari­ma for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in forth­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

And for­mer COP MP Lin­coln Dou­glas says he’s open to talks with the UNC or the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment af­ter he re­signed from the COP re­cent­ly.

For­mer Ari­ma MP Samuel said yes­ter­day, he re­signed from the COP in Feb­ru­ary and is cur­rent­ly fi­nal­is­ing UNC mem­ber­ship process­es. How­ev­er, he hasn’t yet been screened for Ari­ma.

Samuel, a COP MP dur­ing the 2010- 2015 term of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, lost in 2015 to PNM’s An­tho­ny Gar­cia. Samuel was among those who’d at­tend­ed for­mer UNC leader Bas­deo Pan­day’s meet­ing of par­ties ear­li­er this year. Samuel hadn’t been po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive but he said he’d been as­sist­ing to train COP mem­bers dur­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

On re­sign­ing from the COP, Samuel said, “I tried my best and tried to as­sist when some peo­ple asked. But un­for­tu­nate­ly, it didn’t work out.”

Samuel said he’s been en­cour­aged by UNC’s eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery plan and im­pressed with the par­ty’s car­ried its fight on T&T’s be­half.

“I’m al­so heart­ened to see how much that par­ty has done to help thou­sands of peo­ple with COVID-19 re­lief,” he said.

On the rea­son for his re­turn­ing to ac­tive pol­i­tics, Samuel said he wants to con­tin­ue the work the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion did in Ari­ma.

“Noth­ing’s hap­pened since I left in 2015. The on­ly thing the PNM did was con­tin­ue the Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal project which we start­ed. How­ev­er, the plan’s been changed. We catered for same-day surg­eries and oth­er plans. I’m al­so in­ter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing the Blan­chisseuse Na­ture Dri­ve plan we had. The road is very bad now.”

Mean­while, for­mer COP mem­ber Dou­glas yes­ter­day said he feels he has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to serve the coun­try al­though he re­signed from the COP. The for­mer Lopinot-Bon Air West MP said he’d made his rea­son for leav­ing COP clear re­cent­ly, that he felt the COP was in demise.

“We’d been try­ing to make this work but elec­tions are com­ing and noth­ing was hap­pen­ing so I de­cid­ed to (re­sign) now,” Dou­glas said.

“It wasn’t be­cause I’m ‘go­ing to the UNC’ or any­where like some may think. But I’m quite open to talks with the UNC - or even the PNM- or any par­ty that wish­es to talk to me if it is that they want to do some­thing bet­ter for T&T.’’

UNC sources al­so said there are oth­er peo­ple with for­mer COP back­grounds who may be in the run­ning for East-West cor­ri­dor ar­eas.