Gail Alexan­der

Let­ters are ex­pect­ed to be is­sued this week to PNM con­stituen­cies of­fi­cial­ly in­struct­ing them to open nom­i­na­tions for gen­er­al elec­tions— and the par­ty’s al­ready abuzz with spec­u­la­tion on which in­cum­bents won’t be re­turn­ing.

Par­ty chair­man Colm Im­bert last Sat­ur­day an­nounced Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley had in­struct­ed the PNM to open nom­i­na­tions for all con­stituen­cies.

The cur­rent term ends Sep­tem­ber 7. Elec­tions can be called up to three months af­ter, lat­est.

Last year, PNM se­lect­ed three gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates : Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat (Ch­agua­nas East), PNM Sen­a­tor Ndale Young (San Juan/Barataria) and PNM as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Daniel Dook­ie (Point a-Pierre.)

Yes­ter­day, par­ty gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings said cor­re­spon­dence is like­ly to be is­sued to con­stituen­cies this week to com­mence the process.

Par­ty groups nor­mal­ly sub­mit nom­i­na­tions Any­one be­ing nom­i­nat­ed by at last one group is el­i­gi­ble to be screened first by the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive. PNM’s na­tion­al screen­ing team ul­ti­mate­ly screens all nom­i­nees.

Cum­mings, whose name has been heard in con­nec­tion with pos­si­ble can­di­da­cy for La Hor­quet­ta -Tal­paro (held by Max­ie Cuffie), didn’t re­spond on that. When pressed if he may con­test any­where, he said “At this point, I’d con­sid­er if asked.”

Some in­cum­bents have ex­pressed in­ter­est in con­test­ing again in­clud­ing for San Fer­nan­do West, Point Fortin, San Fer­nan­do East , Ari­ma, D’Abadie O’ Meara,Tu­na­puna and oth­er seats.

While some front­line in­cum­bents are ex­pect­ed to be among PNM’s gen­er­al elec­tion team again, changes are ex­pect­ed in some seats where cer­tain MPs have been neg­a­tive­ly spot­light­ed.

Row­ley, in a re­cent in­ter­view, ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment in for­mer min­is­ters Dar­ryl Smith (Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral) and Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald (PoS South) who were re­moved from Cab­i­net.

Smith was re­moved fol­low­ing is­sues con­cern­ing a for­mer Sport Min­istry em­ploy­ee. Mc­Don­ald is be­fore the courts on sev­en charges of al­leged cor­rup­tion.

PNM Port-of-Spain South chair­man Wen­dell Stephens said yes­ter­day, “We’ll fol­low the par­ty’s in­struc­tions when they ar­rive and pro­ceed to open nom­i­na­tions for in­ter­est­ed peo­ple.”

Oth­er PNM Port-of-Spain South of­fi­cials said Mc­Don­ald re­mains very ac­tive with con­stituents and cur­rent­ly has three events that she’s host­ing.

They not­ed she had the largest num­ber of nom­i­na­tions in 2015 among oth­er nom­i­nees Adri­an Clarke, Louis Lee Singh and Ayesha Wells. Mc­Don­ald, who didn’t at­tend last Fri­day’s re­open­ing of the Red House, hasn’t com­ment­ed on her fu­ture.

PNM Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral of­fi­cials said they’re await­ing of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from the par­ty and couldn’t com­ment on pos­si­ble nom­i­na­tions. Names of two in­cum­bents have been heard con­cern­ing this seat.

Yes­ter­day, PNM con­stituents cel­e­brat­ed with the par­ty for its 64th an­niver­sary. This was marked by a func­tion at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts which PNM leader Row­ley ad­dressed.

The par­ty ho­n­oured 10 peo­ple with the Dr Er­ic Williams Medal of Ho­n­our for long and mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice and al­so launched a PNM mo­bile app

On PNM’s an­niver­sary, PNM PRO Lau­rel Leza­ma- Lee Sing said, “The PNM recog­nis­es the crit­i­cal role it has played in the de­vel­op­ment of our Re­pub­lic, and it’s cog­nisant of the role it must con­tin­ue to play as we move for­ward along the strate­gic path of de­vel­op­ment for our coun­try. “