Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Moru­ga MP Lovell Fran­cis’ fu­ture with the seat is hang­ing in the bal­ance. He’s now among five nom­i­nees vy­ing to con­test the seat but PNM’s Moru­ga ex­ec­u­tive re­cent­ly rec­om­mend­ed some­one else.

And af­ter Moru­ga-Table­land nom­i­nees were screened by the PNM last Sat­ur­day, no de­ci­sion was an­nounced. In­stead, of­fi­cials from the unit were asked to meet with par­ty ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials to­day.

Al­so, PNM’s San Fer­nan­do East ex­ec­u­tive is al­so ex­pect­ed to hear from par­ty of­fi­cials to­day on if Bri­an Man­ning or in­cum­bent Ran­dall Mitchell will be their gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date or if an­oth­er ef­fort may be need­ed. Mitchell’s team had chal­lenged Man­ning’s sole se­lec­tion as the con­stituen­cy can­di­date due to what they claimed was an elec­tion dis­crep­an­cy dur­ing the San Fer­nan­do East can­di­date vot­ing process on Fri­day. Man­ning heard noth­ing on his sit­u­a­tion up to yes­ter­day.

This was the feed­back yes­ter­day from PNM ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials af­ter nom­i­nees for Moru­ga-Table­land, San Fer­nan­do East and West and sev­er­al oth­er seats were screened by the PNM last Sat­ur­day.

It was the lat­est batch of nom­i­nees af­ter PNM front­line in­cum­bents for var­i­ous East West cor­ri­dor seats were screened and ap­proved last Thurs­day.

In last Sat­ur­day’s ex­er­cise, of­fi­cials said nom­i­nees were screened for Moru­ga-Table­land (five in­clud­ing MP Fran­cis), San Fer­nan­do East (Man­ning and Mitchell) and West (sole nom­i­nee in­cum­bent MP Faris Al-Rawi), Point Fortin (three in­clud­ing in­cum­bent Ed­mund Dil­lon).

Al- Rawi was ap­proved for the seat again, PNM San Fer­nan­do East cam­paign man­ag­er Ter­rence Beepath said.

But PNM of­fi­cials said most oth­er con­stituen­cies screened were told they will be in­formed of their sit­u­a­tion to­day.

Among those ex­pect­ed to be ad­dressed to­day is Morug-Table­land.

The PNM won the seat in 2015 with 500-plus votes. At that time, Fran­cis was backed and rec­om­mend­ed for the can­di­da­cy by the ex­ec­u­tive.

But in this round of­fi­cials said the ex­ec­u­tive and ma­jor­i­ty of par­ty groups hadn’t rec­om­mend­ed Fran­cis but a re­tired teacher who had worked on Fran­cis’ cam­paign in 2015 and had strong fol­low­ing in the area. There are 28 par­ty groups.

Oth­er nom­i­nees in­clud­ed a for­mer coun­cil­lor, young ac­tivist and two oth­ers (all male).

PNM of­fi­cials said it was felt that Fran­cis hadn’t been “ful­ly ef­fec­tive” in the term though they said he’d been ex­cel­lent with get­ting in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment in the seat.

They, how­ev­er, not­ed when Fran­cis en­tered as MP, the area had two coun­cil­lors and two al­der­men on the Princes Town Cor­po­ra­tion but this lat­er slid down.

In 2019 elec­tions, the par­ty lost all coun­cil­lors in that area and on­ly got one al­der­man. Of­fi­cials are con­cerned he “wasn’t ful­ly con­nect­ed with the con­stituen­cy’s po­lit­i­cal struc­ture.”

“There were al­so claims about at­ten­dance at con­stituen­cy and ex­ec­u­tive meet­ings. Cer­tain polls were al­so done in the area that showed the seat wasn’t get­ting the sup­port,” they added.

Moru­ga chair­man’s David Trim de­clined com­ment, on­ly say­ing the screen­ing com­mit­tee held the ul­ti­mate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to choose a can­di­date they had con­fi­dence in to en­sure vic­to­ry at the polls.

Fran­cis didn’t im­me­di­ate­ly an­swer calls yes­ter­day. PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings al­so didn’t an­swer calls and text mes­sages yes­ter­day.