Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Op­po­si­tion, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which is now on a gen­er­al elec­tion foot­ing, will soon seek nom­i­na­tions for can­di­dates. The par­ty’s po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, will be lead­ing the charge when­ev­er elec­tions are called.

This was con­firmed in a state­ment from pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Kirk Meighoo yes­ter­day, af­ter the par­ty’s Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive met on Mon­day. It was the first meet­ing since last month’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls, which the UNC has claimed as a “sig­nif­i­cant elec­toral vic­to­ry”.

In ad­di­tion to lo­cal gov­ern­ment mat­ters, the meet­ing fo­cused on a gen­er­al ex­am­i­na­tion of the par­ty’s sit­u­a­tion ahead of next Mon­day’s launch of the fourth ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment.

The five-year term of the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion ends in 23 months. Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Au­gust 14 elec­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that Trinidad and To­ba­go was mov­ing for­ward to the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, some sea­soned and new UNC MPs, in­clud­ing Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes, said they would seek nom­i­na­tions again. Oth­ers, who did not wish to be named, said they would de­cide clos­er to the end of the nom­i­na­tion pe­ri­od, or were un­cer­tain due to fam­i­ly de­mands but would dis­cuss or con­sid­er it.

Siparia UNC ac­tivists said they want­ed no one but “we own Kam­la” for their can­di­date.

The UNC’s state­ment on Mon­day said Per­sad-Bisses­sar “will proud­ly lead the charge when­ev­er gen­er­al elec­tions are called, in keep­ing with the man­date giv­en to her by mem­bers of the par­ty”.

Oth­er is­sues dis­cussed in­clud­ed gen­er­al elec­tion plan­ning, up­com­ing Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) re­ports on bound­ary changes and par­lia­men­tary is­sues.

The meet­ing al­so fo­cused on sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, EBC ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, elec­tion pe­ti­tions in Lengua/In­di­an Walk and Ari­ma North­east and train­ing for lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

The UNC will al­so hold bud­get con­sul­ta­tions with re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Af­ter the meet­ing, some at­ten­dees con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had made it clear she was not leav­ing the lead­er­ship and was giv­en a round of ap­plause.

Some op­po­si­tion ac­tivists, in­clud­ing for­mer PR team vice chair­man Mar­sha Walk­er and at­tor­ney Lar­ry Lal­la, had re­cent­ly called for her to step aside.

Ly­der: No Sen­ate changes

In re­sponse to so­cial me­dia claims that UNC as­so­ciates Gary Grif­fith and Jack Warn­er would be brought in­to the Sen­ate for the new term as re­place­ments for Damien Ly­der and David Nakhid, Ly­der said yes­ter­day: “I heard the claims but I can speak with con­fi­dence that there will be no changes on UNC’s Sen­ate bench­es de­spite what PNM trolls and oth­ers at­tempt to ped­dle.”

Al­so, fol­low­ing last week’s Guardian Me­dia sto­ry on the de­par­ture of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Julie Ram­lal and in­for­ma­tion spe­cial­ist Ray­den Boodan from the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s Port-of-Spain of­fice, Meighoo said the Op­po­si­tion Leader is ad­dress­ing the fill­ing of those va­can­cies.

He said the is­sue of the phone line at that of­fice, which has been con­tin­u­ous­ly ring­ing busy since last week and ap­peared to be ei­ther off the hook or out of ser­vice, would al­so be ad­dressed. The line was still non-op­er­a­tional yes­ter­day.