Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly four nom­i­nees to be screened by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to­day for the Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la seat. Screen­ing will be done at the UNC’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fice this evening, where nom­i­nees for Tabaquite, Point Fortin, La Brea, and oth­er ar­eas will al­so be in­ter­viewed.

The can­di­dates for Point Fortin and La Brea will come from the UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests (COI) part­ner, the OW­TU. The two will be pre­sent­ed to the UNC to­day by OW­TU pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get, as con­firmed by the OW­TU yes­ter­day. The nom­i­nees are OW­TU mem­bers who have been sup­port­ing the UNC since last year.

Tabaquite and Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la are held by so-called “dis­si­dent” MPs Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne and Dr Rai Rag­bir. Both were part of UNC Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s sup­port­ers who called for UNC’s ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions to be held last year. The group was crit­i­cal of the run­ning of the UNC. Both were on Paray’s Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate, which con­test­ed the in­ter­nal poll.

How­ev­er, in a bit­ter­ly con­test­ed in­ter­nal elec­tion, their slate lost to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Stars slate.

Last April, Haynes-Al­leyne and Rag­bir both filed nom­i­na­tions with the UNC to con­test their seats in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion.

Last week, Rag­bir, who said last year he knew he would not be se­lect­ed, added that he did not want to be screened by peo­ple charged with al­leged wrong­do­ing. He al­so crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship.

Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la nom­i­nees in­clude UNC Sen­a­tor Damien Ly­der and three oth­ers. For­mer min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine is not among the nom­i­nees. UNC of­fi­cials, who said the par­ty was on tar­get to con­clude screen­ing this week, stat­ed that no de­ci­sion has been made on the Ma­yaro seat, which was among five screened on Mon­day.

Nom­i­nees were Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray, cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er, and UNC In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Wil­fred Nicholas Mor­ris.

Guayagua­yare-born and from a long­stand­ing Ma­yaro en­er­gy sec­tor fam­i­ly, Mor­ris has been with the UNC for 18 years and has served as the UNC Par­lia­men­tary Re­searcher (En­er­gy/Par­lia­men­tary Af­fairs) for ten years.

He won Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed’s Youth Prime Min­is­ter ti­tle in its “Youth Elect TT” 2015 event. Mor­ris served as Na­tion­al Youth Arm Chair­man (2011–2015) and In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer on­ward, and he served as a Com­mon­wealth Youth Par­lia­men­tar­i­an, a Com­mon­wealth Youth Am­bas­sador, and a Na­tion­al Youth Par­lia­men­tar­i­an.

Mean­while, Move­ment for Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment leader Garvin Nicholas, who plans to con­test Diego Mar­tin North East, said PNM in­cum­bent MP Colm Im­bert's ap­proval to con­test again "is nei­ther good for his con­stituen­cy nor the coun­try."

"Promis­ing to be the best MP af­ter fail­ing so many times for 34 years won’t cut it. It’s just go­ing to be more emp­ty promis­es. If he's re­turned as an MP and be­comes a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, he’s most like­ly to get back the Fi­nance port­fo­lio. That will on­ly lead to an­oth­er five years of in­creased tax­es and eco­nom­ic de­cline for the peo­ple, mixed with an un­prece­dent­ed lev­el of ar­ro­gance," Nicholas added.

"That con­stituen­cy needs an MP who will put the in­ter­ests of the peo­ple first. There's much to be done in every area, most im­por­tant­ly bring­ing all of the peo­ple to­geth­er. As such, I'm pre­pared to of­fer my­self to the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin North East—not just as an al­ter­na­tive to the PNM, but to Colm Im­bert specif­i­cal­ly."

Nicholas said his aim was "to rep­re­sent all the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin North East, whether an­ti-PNM, pro-PNM, or neu­tral. We can work to­geth­er for the com­mon good. I want to bring the en­tire con­stituen­cy to­geth­er. I'll there­fore re­quest that all par­ties or per­sons who share this goal work with me to make this a re­al­i­ty for the peo­ple of Diego Mar­tin North East and Trinidad and To­ba­go as a whole."