UNC sen­a­tor Anil Roberts didn’t seek to con­test his north-east co-or­di­na­tor’s post in up­com­ing par­ty elec­tions since he’s “laser-fo­cused” on co-or­di­nat­ing the St Joseph seat for the par­ty in prepa­ra­tion for the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

Roberts in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day as he com­ment­ed on the change with the north-east co-or­di­na­tor’s post on the Star team con­test­ing June 15 Na­tex elec­tion against MP Rush­ton Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate.

Roberts, who was re­placed as north-east re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive by St Au­gus­tine MP Kadi­jah Ameen, said, “I’m to­tal­ly laser-fo­cused on co-or­di­nat­ing the St Joseph seat for Team UNC in prepa­ra­tion for the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, so I didn’t seek a sec­ond term as north-east re­gion­al co-or­di­na­tor.

“I’m 100 per cent be­hind my po­lit­i­cal leader, the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, and the Star team,” Roberts added.

Af­ter the dead­line for with­draw­al of Na­tex can­di­dates passed last Sat­ur­day with no with­drawals and the 35 can­di­dates for the poll were of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced on Mon­day by the par­ty’s Elec­tion Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee, ten changes to the 17 in­cum­bent posts on the Star team were made of­fi­cial via an EMC an­nounce­ment.

Changes in­clud­ed shift­ing MPs Ravi Rati­ram from con­test­ing his cur­rent post of par­ty or­gan­is­er to ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer and Van­dana Mo­hit from ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer to cen­tral re­gion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

“Pro­mot­ed” was MP Bar­ry Padarath (in­cum­bent Cen­tral rep­re­sen­ta­tive) to con­test par­ty or­gan­is­er.

Padarath yes­ter­day lent some in­sight on the “reshuf­fle” of can­di­dates on the slates.

“Com­pared to the oth­ers (ri­vals), a num­ber of us have been work­ing the mar­gin­al seats fol­low­ing the gains the UNC made in the 2023 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion and in light of those gains, strate­gi­cal­ly, the leader, in her wis­dom, would have looked at where our strate­gies lie and aligned peo­ple’s strengths to the re­spec­tive po­si­tions be­ing con­test­ed.”

Busi­ness­man and for­mer Nipdec chair­man (2010-15) Ham­lyn Jailal, who’s con­test­ing deputy chair­man­ship, which is held by Ameen, said he was on the road yes­ter­day and couldn’t speak.

At­tor­neys Sad­dam Ho­sein (re­search of­fi­cer) and Sean Sobers (pol­i­cy and strat­e­gy of­fi­cer) will now be con­test­ing each oth­er’s re­spec­tive posts ahead.

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Arnold Ram, who was brought on the slate to con­test the elec­tions of­fi­cer post - re­plac­ing in­cum­bent Don Sylvester—didn’t an­swer calls.

Those who were not shift­ed on the Star slate from con­test­ing their in­cum­bent posts are the three deputy lead­ers—Roodal Mooni­lal, Jear­lean John, David Lee, Dave Tan­coo (chair­man), south and north-west re­gion­al co-or­di­na­tors Shan­ty Boodram and Eli Za­k­our and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions of­fi­cer Nicholas Mor­ris.

The youngest on the Star slate, Mor­ris holds one of the longest tenures on the ex­ec­u­tive. He was elect­ed to the Na­tex in 2011-2015 as Youth Arm chair­man and then as IRO in 2015/17 and 2020/22.