Po­lit­i­cal par­ties are hus­tling! The rul­ing Peo­ples’ Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and PNM and Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leapt in­to high elec­tion prepa­ra­tion gear on Sat­ur­day af­ter the Au­gust 10 elec­tion date was an­nounced last Fri­day. Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the elec­tion date dur­ing the Par­lia­ment sit­ting. Par­lia­ment was dis­solved at mid­night.

Nom­i­na­tion day is Ju­ly 17, giv­ing par­ties on­ly two weeks to fi­nalise can­di­dates. Their doc­u­ments must be pre­sent­ed to the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion of­fi­cers in the 41 con­stituen­cies on Nom­i­na­tion Day.

The ma­jor­i­ty of the PNM’s 41 can­di­dates have been cam­paign­ing since May when some of them were se­lect­ed.

On Sat­ur­day, while PM Row­ley at­tend­ed the launch of the Point Fortin hos­pi­tal, all 41 PNM cam­paign man­agers, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy co-or­di­na­tors for the 41 seats and co-or­di­na­tors ap­point­ed for 18 con­stituen­cies held a three-hour meet­ing at the Gov­ern­ment cam­pus, Port-of-Spain. This was led by PNM cam­paign man­ag­er Ro­han Sinanan and ex­perts. The 18 co-or­di­na­tors are serv­ing mar­gin­als and strong­holds like POS South.

The PNM will launch its cam­paign via vir­tu­al plat­form next Sun­day in Row­ley’s Diego Mar­tin area. Among the themes is a call to mem­bers "Com­ing Back Home." Of­fi­cials said the PNM's thrust in­volves con­sol­i­dat­ing mem­bers’ sup­port and en­sur­ing their op­por­tu­ni­ty to vote apart from seek­ing oth­er ex­ter­nal sup­port.

The spokesman said the launch will be done with­in COVID-19 re­stric­tions which cur­tail gath­er­ings to on­ly 25. "This will be a dif­fer­ent type of elec­tion," they added.

UNC MPs out

The Op­po­si­tion UNC, mean­while, launch­es cam­paign and can­di­dates on Sun­day, ahead of the PNM.

Due to COVID reg­u­la­tions, UNC of­fi­cials said the launch may be done vir­tu­al­ly from UNC’s San Fer­nan­do of­fice. UNC has been hold­ing week­ly vir­tu­al meet­ings.

The UNC, con­test­ing on­ly in 39 Trinidad seats, had se­lect­ed 17 can­di­dates when the elec­tion bell rang last Fri­day. Can­di­dates were on walk­a­bouts on Sat­ur­day.

UNC’s lead­er­ship spent Sat­ur­day at their San Fer­nan­do of­fice fi­nal­is­ing can­di­dates for the oth­er 22 seats, the par­ty con­firmed.

The 13 UNC in­cum­bents who filed nom­i­na­tions to con­test were al­so called to a 2 pm meet­ing at that of­fice to be told if they were ap­proved or not. The meet­ing was lat­er shift­ed to 6 pm.

Those who did not seek nom­i­na­tion were MPs Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Tim Gopeesingh, Fuad Khan, Gan­ga Singh and Prakash Ra­mad­har. Their re­place­ments were be­ing fi­nalised on Sat­ur­day night.

In­cum­bents at­tend­ed the meet­ing in­clud­ed Bhoe Tewarie (Ca­roni Cen­tral), Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein (Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la), Rudy In­dars­ingh (Cou­va South), Ra­mona Ram­di­al (Cou­va North), Fazal Karim (Ch­agua­nas East), Roodal Mooni­lal (Oropouche East), Vidya Guyadeen-Gopeesingh (Oropouche West), Rush­ton Paray (Ma­yaro), Rod­ney Charles (Na­pari­ma), David Lee (Pointe-a-Pierre), Lack­ram Bo­doe (Fyz­abad). Those tipped to be re­turned in­clud­ed Lee, Paray and Bo­doe.

But among those who were not se­lect­ed it was learned last night were Ram­di­al and Karim who emerged from the meet­ing first. Ram­di­al in sub­dued tones de­clined com­ment when con­tact­ed lat­er. Karim did not an­swer calls. Par­ty of­fi­cials al­so con­firmed that Newal­lo-Ho­sein was asked to step down. At least three oth­er in­cum­bents were ex­pect­ed to be re­placed.

Cou­va North nom­i­nees had in­clud­ed Ravi Rati­ram. Ch­agua­nas East nom­i­nees in­clud­ed Ch­agua­nas May­or Van­dana Mo­hit who was tipped for the seat, and an­a­lyst Kirk Meighoo.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly de­fend­ed seek­ing new faces and a new gen­er­a­tion say­ing youth must not be left to stand as on­look­ers. To those not se­lect­ed, she said there was a space and a place, as a mix of ex­pe­ri­ence and fresh ideas were need­ed.

UNC Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath, who is in Flori­da, was screened vir­tu­al­ly. He said on Sat­ur­day that he re­ceived fi­nal ex­emp­tion doc­u­ments to com­plete from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. He ex­pects to re­turn this week but did not know if he was cho­sen. If not MP, he said there are oth­er ar­eas.

Padarath must be quar­an­tined on re­turn. Po­lice said they want to in­ter­view him on re­turn about an al­leged $3 mil­lion is­sue and a per­son. He said he will co-op­er­ate with the re­quest.

UNC on­ly needs 3 seats to win

With­in the 41 con­stituen­cies, elec­tion fo­cus is tar­get­ed on a hand­ful of PNM-held seats con­sid­ered mar­gin­al: Moru­ga/Table­land, To­ba­go East, To­co/San­gre Grande, San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph and Tu­na­puna.

To­co/San­gre Grande and San Fer­nan­do West are among 12 con­stituen­cies where polling di­vi­sions have been shift­ed by the EBC's elec­tion draft or­der.

For the UNC to win, the par­ty must ob­tain a min­i­mum of three seats plus the 18 it cur­rent­ly holds, plac­ing the spot­light on at least three con­stituen­cies­—par­tic­u­lar­ly Moru­ga/Table­land, To­ba­go East and To­co/San­gre Grande.

In Moru­ga, UNC is tar­get­ting PNM’s can­di­date Win­ston Pe­ters, a for­mer UNC MP, re­plac­ing in­cum­bent Lovell Fran­cis. UNC im­proved its stand­ing there in the 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions. Pe­ters is aid­ed by for­mer UNC Cu­mu­to MP Collin Par­tap. For­mer PNM MP Pe­ter Tay­lor said he was walk­ing with UNC can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin

In To­co/San­gre Grande, the UNC is pin­ning faith on its LG elec­tion im­prove­ments where it won the San­gre Grande cor­po­ra­tion. UNC’s can­di­date Nabi­la Greene, an ex­pect­ed plat­form star with a sto­ry to tell, is con­test­ing against PNM’s Roger Mon­roe, an­oth­er new­com­er who is work­ing ar­eas where PNM lapsed in LG polls. Three To­co polling di­vi­sions are be­ing placed in Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la.

In To­ba­go East, al­though UNC is not con­test­ing there, par­ty hopes are high for a PNM de­feat by Wat­son Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP). A UNC front­lin­er told Guardian Me­dia last month that if PDP won and it was need­ed to help form the Gov­ern­ment, talks would oc­cur post-elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day PDP’s Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the par­ty launched in Jan­u­ary ex­pect­ing ear­ly polls and "change is hit­ting To­ba­go." If PDP holds the bal­ance of pow­er, he said "We know trends are that who­ev­er wins will do so mar­gin­al­ly. We’re con­vinced PNM’s not good for To­ba­go but we’d speak to both par­ties, ad­vanc­ing an agen­da. Who­ev­er has the agen­da most favour­ing To­ba­go—greater au­ton­o­my—we’ll go with that.’"

In San Fer­nan­do West, where UNC im­proved stand­ing in LG polls and where PNM MP Faris Al-Rawi has been walk­ing con­sis­tent­ly, UNC’s Sean Sobers said his walk­a­bouts have not­ed un­cer­tain­ty about Gov­ern­ment, even by PNM vot­ers in some places.

"Peo­ple seem more open to some­one ob­jec­tive, re­lat­able and bi­par­ti­san. I’ve got­ten new­found re­spect for many in the com­mu­ni­ty whose abil­i­ty can be valu­able if we give them sup­port and eq­ui­ty," he added. Two polling di­vi­sions from PNM-held San Fer­nan­do East are be­ing placed in San Fer­nan­do West.

Beck­les help­ing 4 seats

PNM’s Ari­ma can­di­date Pen­ny Beck­les—out of quar­an­tine—start­ed walk­a­bouts this week in Pin­to, Aripo and Train­line. She al­so met Ari­ma of­fi­cials on vi­sion and im­prove­ments. Yes­ter­day Beck­les walked with PNM’s La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro can­di­date Fos­ter Cum­mings and at­tend­ed an elec­tion of­fice launch.

The par­ty has con­firmed Beck­les was man­dat­ed to as­sist La Hor­quet­ta and PNM’s cam­paigns in To­co/San­gre Grande, Lopinot/Bon Air and D’Abadie/O’Meara. Beck­les as­sist­ed PNM’s LG To­co/San­gre Grande cam­paign. When she was screened re­cent­ly, her se­lec­tion was an­nounced by Row­ley him­self.

PNM’s Ja­son Williams is seek­ing to snatch Barataria/San Juan from UNC’s Sad­dam Ho­sein. PNM La Brea can­di­date Steve Mcletchie will be­gin walk­ing this week, the ex­ec­u­tive said, adding moves to con­sol­i­date sup­port­ers were met "with good re­sponse...they un­der­stand it’s line up or be left be­hind."

POS South can­di­date Kei­th Scot­land—the fi­nal PNM can­di­date to be se­lect­ed last Thurs­day—will hit the ground next week, POS South ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Wen­dell Stephens said. Scot­land on 102 ra­dio said he had sup­port­ed out­go­ing MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald and has her sup­port.

A COVID-strapped poll

With COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions in force, the elec­tion cam­paign, like the rest of T&T, will fea­ture a new nor­mal—no crowd­ed pub­lic meet­ings and so­cial dis­tanc­ing in place where events are held.

With the reg­u­la­tion de­bar­ring pub­lic gath­er­ings over 25 peo­ple, huge out­door meet­ings may not be held.

Politi­cians on both sides al­so said they recog­nised so­cial dis­tanc­ing and masks will be part of the pro­to­cols for vot­ers on elec­tion day.

The land­scape will al­so be de­void of the usu­al post-meet­ing pas­time of go­ing to bars to “di­gest” state­ments since bars can on­ly open up to 8 pm un­der reg­u­la­tions.

On Sat­ur­day the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s 41 Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers for the elec­tion were pre­sent­ed with their re­spec­tive writs of elec­tion by Chief Elec­tion Of­fi­cer Fern Nar­cis-Scope. The pre­sen­ta­tion was made at the end of a two-day EBC Train­ing Ses­sion on Ju­ly 3-4 in prepa­ra­tion for polls.