sto­ries by

Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) mem­ber Lar­ry Lal­la is be­ing con­sid­ered for a seat by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), but UNC of­fi­cials won’t say if it’s St Au­gus­tine.

Lal­la, a mem­ber in the past Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) Gov­ern­ment, was a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor in 2014. There were re­ports that he sought nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for the May 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions. But he nev­er filed a nom­i­na­tion pa­per.

In De­cem­ber 2015, af­ter the PP lost the elec­tions, Lal­la sought the UNC’s deputy lead­er­ship post on UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal’s Team Loy­al­ist slate. Mooni­lal sought the lead­er­ship from cur­rent in­cum­bent Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, but she won.

Last month, Lal­la was ap­point­ed to act as a tem­po­rary UNC sen­a­tor in the Sen­ate dur­ing de­bate on amend­ments to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Act.

Lal­la wasn’t avail­able for com­ment yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, par­ty of­fi­cials said he’s cer­tain­ly like­ly to be con­sid­ered for a seat, though they couldn’t con­firm whether it was St Au­gus­tine, Tu­na­puna or in Cen­tral T&T.

The Au­gus­tine seat is ex­pect­ed to be open for con­test. Cur­rent MP Prakash Ra­mad­har (COP) has said he hasn’t de­cid­ed on his di­rec­tion —whether he’s open to con­test­ing or not.

Yes­ter­day, COP leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan said Ra­mad­har hadn’t ap­proached the COP or at­tend­ed any COP meet­ings such as Na­tion­al Coun­cil or oth­er­wise.

She said the sit­u­a­tion would be ad­dressed in screen­ing ex­er­cis­es. COP is part of the Bet­ter Unit­ed en­ti­ty com­pris­ing sev­er­al small­er par­ties, each of which is con­test­ing dif­fer­ent ar­eas.

For­mer UNC min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath who was once the UNC’s St Au­gus­tine MP had been hold­ing meet­ings in var­i­ous ar­eas last year. But he said yes­ter­day he will not be par­tic­i­pat­ing in elec­tions. He re­cent­ly com­plet­ed work with Gov­ern­ment’s tech­no­crat team on Re­cov­ery Roadmap plans.

Mean­while, there’s an­oth­er UNC nom­i­nee in Cou­va North apart from MP Ra­mona Ram­di­al. She said yes­ter­day, “I’m con­fi­dent that I did the work—let’s see what hap­pens.”

In Cou­va South, of­fi­cials said a UNC Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber has filed nom­i­na­tion pa­pers to seek the seat which in­cum­bent MP Rudy In­dars­ingh is al­so seek­ing to con­test.