Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, ac­com­pa­nied by sev­er­al in­cum­bent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MPs, will to­day file nom­i­na­tions to con­test the gen­er­al elec­tions.

At Mon­day’s UNC meet­ing in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the hours for fil­ing elec­tion nom­i­na­tions had been ex­tend­ed to 6 pm to­day, when sub­mis­sion ends. Screen­ings are due to be­gin next month.

Par­ty of­fi­cials con­firmed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be ac­com­pa­nied by oth­er MPs to the par­ty’s head­quar­ters in cen­tral Trinidad around 1 pm to file her nom­i­na­tion for Siparia. Among them are MPs who re­cent­ly pledged loy­al­ty to her and the par­ty, fol­low­ing the re­cent fall­out from Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s call for UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions by June.

Ex­pect­ed to ac­com­pa­ny Per­sad-Bisses­sar are Bar­ry Padarath (Princes Town), Kadi­jah Ameen (St Au­gus­tine), Roodal Mooni­lal (Oropouche East), Dr Rishad Seecher­an (Ca­roni East), Arnold Ram (Ca­roni Cen­tral) and Dave Tan­coo (Oropouche West).

Pointe-a-Pierre MP David Lee, who is fac­ing two crim­i­nal charges, hasn’t yet in­di­cat­ed whether he will seek nom­i­na­tion for the seat again.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tors Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al (for San Fer­nan­do West/Na­pari­ma), Damien Ly­der (Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la) and deputy leader Jear­lean John (La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro) will be fil­ing nom­i­na­tion pa­pers.

Al­so fil­ing nom­i­na­tion at some point will be Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Rai Rag­bir, who sup­port­ed Paray’s call for in­ter­nal elec­tions. Rag­bir al­so called for lead­er­ship elec­tions

“I should be sub­mit­ting my nom­i­na­tion form. No fan­fare, I go in hu­mil­i­ty and with God’s guid­ance,” he said

Paray, who will seek to con­test the Ma­yaro seat again, said, “I’ll file be­fore Thurs­day’s 6 pm dead­line.”

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly has sig­nalled that he is not seek­ing nom­i­na­tion.

Af­ter there was no men­tion of na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions at UNC’s pub­lic meet­ing on Mon­day, Paray and Rod­ney Charles re­peat­ed their calls for the polls

Paray’s call for the elec­tions to be held by June re­cent­ly ig­nit­ed fu­ri­ous push­back from oth­er MPs. How­ev­er, his call was sup­port­ed by Charles, Rag­bir and Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar sub­se­quent­ly said the in­ter­nals would be held when con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due. Paray and the oth­er MPs said they’d await a date.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar didn’t men­tion Na­tex polls at the meet­ing but not­ed that from all the road paving and oth­er gov­ern­ment projects be­ing done, a gen­er­al elec­tion is com­ing.

Paray said it was sur­pris­ing to see a news re­port claim­ing UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tions will be “put on the back burn­er”.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­ready stat­ed these in­ter­nal elec­tions will be held when they’re con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due, which would mean these in­ter­nal elec­tions are to be held by June 26,” he said.

“Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar knows full well that these in­ter­nal elec­tions are im­por­tant in strength­en­ing our par­ty to en­sure UNC’s vic­to­ry in the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tions.

“I have the ut­most faith the UNC will nev­er com­pro­mise on its prin­ci­ples and it will nev­er put its de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues on the back burn­er.”

Charles said, “My po­si­tion on the hold­ing of in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tions is well known. It is that they ought to be held when they’re con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due.”

UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo had said that the par­ty would fol­low the rel­e­vant pro­ce­dures and the is­sue would be ad­dressed at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.

It was re­cent­ly re­port­ed that can­di­dates nor­mal­ly get five weeks’ no­tice for in­ter­nal polls.