Gail Alexan­der

Ari­ma may­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian is now the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) D’Abadie O’Meara can­di­date af­ter the screen­ing team se­lect­ed her yes­ter­day.

The se­lec­tion was con­firmed by the par­ty.

The screen­ing team in­ter­viewed her among six nom­i­nees which the area’s ex­ec­u­tive had pre­sent­ed.

The screen­ing team fi­nalised D’Abadie O’Meara, the fi­nal con­stituen­cy for which the PNM had to com­plete se­lec­tion, five days be­fore the par­ty’s gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign launch on Sun­day in Diego Mar­tin.

“Ex­cit­ed. Ready to work. Ready to get out there,” was how Mor­ris-Ju­lian said she felt mo­ments af­ter re­ceiv­ing the news that she has been se­lect­ed.

“I have a good team with me. My col­leagues are sup­port­ing me. My ex­ec­u­tive- we’re more than ready to do this. I’m very grate­ful to my po­lit­i­cal leader and the screen­ing com­mit­tee for giv­ing me this op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

“I’m re­al­ly thrilled to be able to rep­re­sent D’abadie O’meara at an­oth­er lev­el and to serve my coun­try. I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about that.”

Asked if she felt she had enough time to cam­paign, she said, “I was born ready. In fact we’ll start work­ing tonight.”

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last Sun­day pulled D’Abadie O’Meara in­cum­bent can­di­date An­cil An­toine from the PNM’s can­di­date team.

This fol­lowed a sec­ond ver­bal in­frac­tion by An­toine who made what Row­ley said were in­sen­si­tive and ob­jec­tion­able re­marks about the US. The re­marks were de­liv­ered at a cam­paign of­fice launch last Sat­ur­day.

In a Face­book record­ing, An­toine is heard say­ing, “Amer­i­ca is a s***hole coun­try.”

He al­so told his au­di­ence to tell their rel­a­tives who go to Amer­i­ca and send back bar­rels, to stay out of T&T for the rest of the year.

An­toine lat­er apol­o­gised, adding he made a “state­ment of in­dis­cre­tion” and asked to be with­drawn from the elec­tions team. An­toine was al­so in con­tro­ver­sy two weeks ago for heat­ed re­marks and ac­cu­sa­tions he made to con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers. The ex­ec­u­tive stood by him but the end of the line came when the re­marks about the US were made.

Apart from D’Abadie O’Meara, the par­ty al­so had to re-screen for Port-of-Spain South af­ter ini­tial can­di­date Cleopa­tra Borel was dropped due to her dual T&T/US cit­i­zen­ship.

She was re­placed by Kei­th Scot­land.

The PNM al­so had pro­tract­ed screen­ings for La Brea, To­co-San­gre Grande and Lopinot-Bon Air West.

—with re­port­ing by Rishard Khan

PNM's Slate:

Ari­ma - Pen­ne­lope Beck­les

Arou­ca/Mal­oney - Camille Robin­son-Reg­is

Barataria/San Juan - Ja­son Williams

Ca­roni Cen­tral - Reyad Ali

Ca­roni East - Sharon Archie

Ch­agua­nas East - Clarence Ramb­harat

Ch­agua­nas West - Rack­eal Bis­soon

Cou­va North - Shar­da Satram

Cou­va South - Ra­jen­dra Ram­per­sad

Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la - Ron­ney Lochan

D’Abadie - O’Meara- Lisa Mor­ris-Julien

Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral - Symon de No­bri­ga

Diego Mar­tin N/East - Colm Im­bert

Diego Mar­tin West - Kei­th Row­ley

Fyz­abad - Solange De Souza

La Brea - Stephen Mc Clashie

La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro - Fos­ter Cum­mings

Laven­tille E/Mor­vant - Adri­an Leonce

Laven­tille West - Fitzger­ald Hinds

Lopinot/Bon Air West - Mar­vin Gon­za­les

Ma­yaro - Sankar (Bun­ny) Ma­habirs­ingh

Moru­ga/Table­land - Win­ston Pe­ters

Na­pari­ma - Randy Sinanan

Oropouche East - Clif­ford Ramb­harose

Oropouche West - Lea Ra­moutar

Point Fortin - Kennedy Richards Jr.

Pointe-a-Pierre - Daniel Dook­ie

POS N/St Ann’s West - Stu­art Young

Port of Spain South - Kei­th Scot­land

Princes Town - Sharon Ba­boolal

San Fer­nan­do East - Bri­an Man­ning

San Fer­nan­do West - Faris Al-Rawi

Siparia - Re­bec­ca Dip­nar­ine

St Ann’s East - Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly

St Au­gus­tine - Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal

St. Joseph - Ter­rence Deyals­ingh

Tabaquite - Michael Seales

To­ba­go East - Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy

To­ba­go West - Sham­fa Cud­joe

To­co/San­gre Grande - Roger Mon­roe

Tu­na­puna - Es­mond Forde