Gail Alexan­der

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will screen its two nom­i­nees for the To­ba­go East and West seats on Sat­ur­day, ahead of the Gov­ern­ment’s Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus on Sun­day and Mon­day.

The par­ty con­firmed the screen­ings in a state­ment from gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings yes­ter­day.

The PNM’s screen­ing team is head­ed by po­lit­i­cal leader Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley. The sole nom­i­nee for To­ba­go East is in­cum­bent MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy. The lone nom­i­nee for To­ba­go West is in­cum­bent MP Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis.

Screen­ing will be held at 4 pm at the Calder Hall Mul­ti­pur­pose Fa­cil­i­ty in Scar­bor­ough, the par­ty stat­ed.

Af­ter Sat­ur­day’s screen­ing of the To­ba­go can­di­dates is con­clud­ed, the two-day Par­lia­men­tary cau­cus re­treat will be­gin on Sun­day. This will be held to re­view Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans’ ac­tiv­i­ties and plan pro­grammes for 2025, as the Par­lia­men­tary term comes to an end in Au­gust 2025. The cau­cus con­cludes on Mon­day (Jan­u­ary 6).

Gov­ern­ment MPs and Sen­a­tors will at­tend the re­treat.

Fac­tored in­to the Par­lia­men­tary pro­gramme now will al­so be a de­bate with­in the next two weeks on the three-month State of Emer­gency which was an­nounced on Mon­day. It was called af­ter TTPS sub­mit­ted in­tel­li­gence to Gov­ern­ment on height­ened crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty af­ter 61 mur­ders were record­ed in De­cem­ber.

Re­gard­ing screen­ing, the PNM has so far se­lect­ed 32 prospec­tive can­di­dates, in­clud­ing those for 19 Op­po­si­tion-held seats and for 13 PNM-held con­stituen­cies.

Af­ter the two To­ba­go seats are fi­nalised, screen­ing will be done for La Brea and Laven­tille East/Mor­vant.

The se­lec­tion of can­di­dates for those two seats was in­com­plete when screen­ing was held on De­cem­ber 2. Nom­i­nees for La Brea are Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell (who’s backed by 19 par­ty units and the ex­ec­u­tive) and con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Jer­mel Pierre (backed by 12 par­ty units).

Nom­i­nees for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant are Mor­vant-born na­tion­al schol­ar Dr Je­re­my In­niss (who’s backed by the ma­jor­i­ty of the area’s 16 par­ty groups), coun­cil­lor Ju­nior St Hi­laire, Tracey East­man, a teacher, en­gi­neer Chris­t­ian Birch­wood and fu­ner­al home di­rec­tor David Simp­son.

Af­ter this, the PNM will then screen for five fi­nal seats - Diego Mar­tin West (held by Row­ley), Diego Mar­tin North­west (Colm Im­bert), Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral (Symon de No­bri­ga), Port-of-Spain North (Stu­art Young) and Port-of-Spain South (Kei­th Scot­land). Par­ty sources said all are “ex­pect­ed” to be nom­i­nat­ed.