It’s a four-way bat­tle for St Au­gus­tine so far af­ter Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad- Bachan yes­ter­day an­nounced she will con­test the St Au­gus­tine seat.

Rack­eal Bis­soon, 24, who is con­test­ing the Ch­agua­nas West seat af­ter be­ing giv­en the nod by the PNM in ear­ly June, said dur­ing a walk­through of Or­chard Gar­dens, that Ch­agua­nas West was an area that ne­glect­ed by their UNC MP.

Over­tures have been made by UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to some re­ject­ed UNC in­cum­bents who might be brought in­to a fu­ture UNC Gov­ern­ment via the Sen­ate or oth­er­wise, UNC deputy leader David Lee has said.

In­cum­bent UNC Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath is re­turn­ing home a lit­tle lat­er this week than ini­tial­ly planned—and he isn’t wor­ried about fall­out from re­cent gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date se­lec­tion since he says the par­ty has ma­tured.

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.

At the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion, over 17,000 vot­ers from the con­stituen­cy of Point Fortin took to the polls.

Busi­ness­man In­shan Ish­mael is gear­ing up to con­test the St Au­gus­tine seat as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date, as he called on con­stituents to re­ject Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date Khadi­jah Ameen who he de­scribed as a non-per­former.

Sev­er­al busi­ness lead­ers have praised out­go­ing UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie for his work in the busi­ness field and one has blunt­ly lament­ed the way Tewarie was “kicked out” of the UNC can­di­date line­up.

Fuad Abu Bakr says he is con­test­ing the Port-of-Spain South seat un­der the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV) par­ty. He says even the PNM saw his po­ten­tial when they screened him for that seat and the NNV is well-poised to stage an up­set in the par­ty strong­hold. He says it’s un­for­tu­nate that the par­ty de­cid­ed to go with At­tor­ney Kei­th Scot­land, “be­cause he (Scot­land) will be on the los­ing end of an elec­tion bat­tle for Port-of-Spain South.”

Mo­hit was among 10 new­com­ers to the po­lit­i­cal are­na who were giv­en the nod by the UNC leader and the screen­ing com­mit­tee to con­test the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Sev­er­al out­go­ing Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) MPs have thanked con­stituents and bid them farewell.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s D’Abadie O’Meara ex­ec­u­tive will to­day present six nom­i­nees to screen for the seat. They in­clude Ari­ma may­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, a for­mer Ari­ma deputy may­or and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als—but no par­ty of­fi­cials.