Gail Alexan­der

It is of­fi­cial—Fitzger­ald Hinds is out of the race for the Laven­tille West can­di­da­cy.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day con­firmed that Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Hinds had with­drawn his con­sent to be nom­i­nat­ed as the can­di­date for Laven­tille West. The PM said he had “no hand” in it.

Row­ley did so at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing af­ter word that Hinds this week with­drew the con­sent he ini­tial­ly gave for nom­i­na­tion. Hinds will there­fore not be screened when Laven­tille West presents its nom­i­nees to PNM’s screen­ing team on Mon­day. Those to be pre­sent­ed may on­ly be Port-of-Spain al­der­man, at­tor­ney Ka­reem Mar­celle, and Dr Kadelle Jes­samy.

Hinds has been Laven­tille West MP since Sep­tem­ber 2015 and was al­so re-elect­ed in 2020. Pri­or to be­ing MP for that area, Hinds was elect­ed Laven­tille East/Mor­vant MP in 1995, serv­ing in that ca­pac­i­ty for 12 years. For the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, Hinds had in­di­cat­ed in­ter­est in nom­i­na­tion to the Laven­tille West PNM ex­ec­u­tive in Sep­tem­ber. He had re­ceived nom­i­na­tion sup­port from par­ty group 69, and this was an­nounced by the unit in Oc­to­ber. They al­so an­nounced that Jes­samy was nom­i­nat­ed by par­ty group 25.

Mar­celle was al­so list­ed as a nom­i­nee. Sub­se­quent­ly, Mar­celle re­ceived 38 votes from a Laven­tille West Women’s League meet­ing where Hinds re­ceived one vote and three ab­stained. That meet­ing, which was leaked on so­cial me­dia, was lat­er an­nulled. The con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive man­dat­ed it be held again due to “ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties”, in­clud­ing a lack of no­ti­fi­ca­tion to oth­er units.

When it was re-held, Mar­celle re­ceived 106 votes, Hinds 78, and Jes­samy got one. How­ev­er, Hinds re­ceived sup­port from the Laven­tille West Youth League with 18 votes to Mar­celle’s 14 and Jes­samy’s four.

Last week, the Laven­tille West ex­ec­u­tive de­cid­ed to rec­om­mend Hinds for the can­di­da­cy. Par­ty ex­ec­u­tives can make their rec­om­men­da­tion on their “pick” for a can­di­date, but all nom­i­nees are screened, and the PNM’s screen­ing team led by Row­ley has the fi­nal de­ci­sion.

But yes­ter­day, word was cir­cu­lat­ed by PNM ac­tivists of a meet­ing of PNM’s Laven­tille West ex­ec­u­tive held on Wednes­day and that Hinds had with­drawn fol­low­ing “fam­i­ly dis­cus­sions.”

The sit­u­a­tion was aired wide­ly on so­cial me­dia, in­clud­ing the al­le­ga­tion that Hinds was “spo­ken to.”

Laven­tille West chair­man Richard Wal­cott did not com­ment on this. At yes­ter­day’s me­dia brief­ing, Row­ley said he had heard of the with­draw­al. He said Hinds was in Cab­i­net ear­li­er, and they had not spo­ken of it, so he had no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

Row­ley added, “But I think it’s con­firmed: Min­is­ter Hinds will not be con­tin­u­ing to of­fer him­self as a can­di­date for his con­stituen­cy. No, I had no hand in it.” Row­ley said he was not en­tire­ly sur­prised at the de­vel­op­ment.

“I’m a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed be­cause Mr Hinds has been with us for a long time. He’s been a very loy­al, hard-work­ing MP and there­fore he’s com­ing to the end of his ser­vice. There’s usu­al­ly sad­ness in part­ing. But I’m sure he’ll be around with us in the par­ty if not in the Gov­ern­ment.”

Row­ley said he had not spo­ken to Hinds yet, “But I knew of his feel­ings along the way, but I’m not sur­prised that he’d have ... you see, when you come to a point some­times, you come to a cross­road, and you have to make a de­ci­sion, and some­times the an­gles of the cross­road are quite sharp. I saw it some­where in the pa­per, I think ... that (it’s) ‘fam­i­ly dis­cus­sions’ or some­thing like that. I too have a fam­i­ly, and I know how these things go.”

Af­ter the is­sue with the leaked Laven­tille West Women’s League meet­ing, Hinds said some women vot­ing to re­ject him as MP was part of a “de­sign” and that at nom­i­na­tion time, the best and the worst be­hav­iour of some arise.

He said he had re­ceived feed­back from some Women’s League mem­bers and the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man that the elec­tion was not fair. He had said that at this time in the PNM’s life, there were “dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties with dif­fer­ent am­bi­tions and mo­ti­va­tions, and it’s a very com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.”

Less than 24 hours be­fore Row­ley’s con­fir­ma­tion, Hinds told Guardian Me­dia he was look­ing for­ward to Mon­day’s PNM screen­ing as he con­tin­ued to have re­sound­ing sup­port from his con­stituen­cy’s ex­ec­u­tive, 37 par­ty leagues, and many of his con­stituents. He al­so ap­peared un­fazed by his com­pe­ti­tion, Mar­celle and Jesse­my.

Hinds did not re­spond to Guardian Me­dia queries yes­ter­day af­ter Row­ley spoke.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Mar­celle, who said he will not be com­ment­ing un­til af­ter screen­ing.