Gail Alexan­der 

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Mor­vant-born na­tion­al schol­ar Dr Je­re­my In­niss has so far emerged with nine par­ty group nom­i­na­tions for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Laven­tille East/ Mor­vant seat, in­clud­ing from the area’s Youth League and Women’s League.

The area has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 par­ty groups, in­clud­ing both leagues. This was in­di­cat­ed by con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials on Thurs­day.

In­niss is among the nom­i­nees for the seat af­ter in­cum­bent MP Adri­an Leonce’s move on De­cem­ber 2 to opt out of that day’s screen­ing due to per­son­al is­sues. The con­stituen­cy unit was man­dat­ed to sub­mit nom­i­nees by De­cem­ber 20. Oth­er nom­i­nees are said to in­clude a teacher, Tracey East­man; fu­ner­al home di­rec­tor David Simp­son; coun­cil­lor Ju­nior St Hi­laire; and en­gi­neer Chris­t­ian Birch­wood.

In­niss was ap­point­ed to serve as a tem­po­rary PNM sen­a­tor at the end of last month. Leonce, on In­sta­gram then, con­grat­u­lat­ed In­niss, say­ing he was a “shin­ing ex­am­ple of ex­cel­lence and ser­vice, ex­em­pli­fy­ing the pow­er of de­ter­mi­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ty-fo­cused lead­er­ship.”

Leonce added, “His stel­lar aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments, in­clud­ing earn­ing 16 Grade Ones in CXC, CSEC, and CAPE from Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, are com­ple­ment­ed by his im­pact­ful ser­vice with­in T&T’s health­care sys­tem dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Dr In­niss’ con­tri­bu­tions to the Por-of-Spain and Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tals ex­tend be­yond clin­i­cal care, en­com­pass­ing mean­ing­ful re­search ef­forts.”

Leonce laud­ed In­niss’ nu­mer­ous ac­co­lades and his blend­ing of Chris­t­ian val­ues with a pas­sion for youth em­pow­er­ment and civic en­gage­ment.

His sup­port team said of In­niss, who was born and bred with­in the con­stituen­cy at Al­mond Court, Mor­vant, “Dr In­niss is a proven young leader with grass­roots con­nec­tions and a dis­tin­guished record of com­mu­ni­ty, par­ty, and na­tion­al ser­vice. He’s tes­ta­ment to the PNM’s com­mit­ment to trans­for­ma­tion­al poli­cies that pos­i­tive­ly im­pact lives. It rep­re­sents the true PNM dream, in which T&T’s young peo­ple can take ad­van­tage of ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by the Gov­ern­ment to achieve suc­cess, which can then be rein­vest­ed.”

In Oc­to­ber, In­niss re­ceived an award along­side oth­er promi­nent icons in Mor­vant from the Sport Min­istry and MP Leonce. This was for his work sur­round­ing youth.

In­niss is an alum­nus of the Glob­al Young Lead­ers Con­fer­ence in New York and Los An­ge­les and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the In­ter­na­tion­al Youth Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence in South Africa. He rep­re­sent­ed the PNM and T&T in the third Chi­na-CELAC Po­lit­i­cal Par­ties Fo­rum and joined a Caribbean youth del­e­ga­tion to Bei­jing.