Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts, who filed gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­na­tion pa­pers for the St Joseph con­stituen­cy, is hop­ing to re­ceive the nod from the UNC’s screen­ing team to con­test the seat.

If suc­cess­ful, he will be com­pet­ing against Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith, and Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der as well as the PNM’s can­di­date for the mar­gin­al seat.

“(But) I love com­pe­ti­tion!” Roberts told Guardian Me­dia on Mon­day.

Grif­fith moved the NTA’s head of­fice to St Joseph and there was an of­fi­cial launch last Sat­ur­day. PEP’s Alexan­der on Sun­day an­nounced his par­ty would (for now) be con­test­ing ten of the 41 con­stituen­cies. Alexan­der said he would con­test the St Joseph seat.

Griffth and Alexan­der, once col­leagues, have been po­lit­i­cal en­e­mies this time around of­ten “spar­ring” on so­cial me­dia.

But Roberts is not per­turbed about how many peo­ple he may have to “fight.”

Roberts was the UNC’s East-West cor­ri­dor co-or­di­na­tor pre­vi­ous­ly. He didn’t con­test that post in the UNC’s June 15 na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive elec­tion and MP Kadi­jah Ameen now holds that task.

Roberts said he is fo­cused on St Joseph and has been on the ground al­ready.

“Yes, my nom­i­na­tion pa­pers were filed for St Joseph since April.

“So, I’m ready to serve the peo­ple of St Joseph, a lot of work has been done there by the UNC. We’ve found—as if we didn’t know—the peo­ple are fed up of the PNM and (MP) Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the ‘Min­is­ter of Death’,” Roberts claimed.

“I hope to see favour with UNC’s screen­ing team and re­in­force con­tin­u­ing to work hard for UNC’s Team St Joseph, bring our par­ty in­to gov­ern­ment and re­turn Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to that right­ful po­si­tion,” he added.

Roberts said the UNC lost St Joseph by a mere 823 votes in the last gen­er­al elec­tion and claimed since then the pop­u­la­tion has seen that the Gov­ern­ment is “in­com­pe­tent.”

“Peo­ple don’t feel safe in their homes, the econ­o­my’s shat­tered, sport and ed­u­ca­tion are at low­est ebb. T&T’s in to­tal sham­bles. So I think with UNC’s poli­cies we’ll in­crease our vot­er turnout from 309,000 in Trinidad to 360,000 and a lot of that will be in St Joseph,” he added.

Al­so on Mon­day, the PNM’s Moru­ga-Table­land con­stituen­cy group held its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing af­ter their June 27 AGM was post­poned. This, af­ter mem­bers com­plained about al­leged vot­er ‘ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties” for their ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions which were to have been done at the June AGM.

PNM ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials su­per­vis­ing the June meet­ing post­poned it and said two of­fi­cials from PNM’s head of­fice would come to the unit to sort out the al­leged is­sues. Yes­ter­day Moru­ga of­fi­cials said mat­ters were in­deed dealt with.

and mem­bers who’d paid their dues were al­lowed to vote on Mon­day. They said the new ex­ec­u­tive was elect­ed smooth­ly.

They con­firmed in­cum­bent chair­man An­son Allen re­mains at the helm with some new faces on the ex­ec­u­tive. The unit hasn’t sub­mit­ted any po­ten­tial can­di­dates as they still have to get nom­i­na­tion forms from the par­ty.

The par­ty last month called for nom­i­na­tions for eight Op­po­si­tion-held con­stituen­cies.