KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

In­cum­bent Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne says any­thing is pos­si­ble when it comes to her con­test­ing the Tabaquite seat, even if it is with an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

This comes as the fate of her can­di­da­cy lies in the hands of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) screen­ing com­mit­tee, fol­low­ing her in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Haynes-Al­leynes was one of four nom­i­nees which in­clud­ed for­mer Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor and UNC’s 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date for San Fer­nan­do West Sean Sobers, UNC events man­ag­er Ke­van Gibbs and busi­ness­man Eli Za­k­our to be screed for the seat.

Asked if she is open to be­ing screened by an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty if she is not re-se­lect­ed, she said, “To quote my po­lit­i­cal leader from yes­ter­day’s (Tues­day) news­pa­pers, in this life any­thing is pos­si­ble!”

Asked how she felt go­ing be­fore UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, whose lead­er­ship she ques­tioned ahead of the par­ty’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, Haynes-Al­leyne said she hoped she would be judged based on all the work she’s done.

Haynes-Al­leyne said, “I feel once I am judged on the work that I have done for my con­stituen­cy and as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress since my tenure as PRO, once the judge­ment is based on com­pe­tence and val­ue added to the or­gan­i­sa­tion, then I am con­fi­dent. How­ev­er, if there are oth­er mech­a­nisms with­in the se­lec­tion process, well that will be a ques­tion for the screen­ing com­mit­tee.

While Haynes-Al­leyne was backed by the ma­jor­i­ty of the UNC Tabaquite con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive and dozens of sup­port­ers, she did not have the sup­port of the con­stituen­cy chair­man—a com­mon­al­i­ty for both the UNC and PNM Tabaquite con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives and their can­di­dates.

In re­sponse to that she said, “One per­son in the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive is sup­port­ing Sean Sobers. One man, one vote here, so the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive is not sup­port­ing Sean Sobers.”

Al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia be­fore the screen­ing, Sobers said, “I feel fan­tas­tic to sub­mit my­self to the screen­ing com­mit­tee of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress. I feel even bet­ter hav­ing the sup­port of the chair­man of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive of Tabaquite who is cur­rent­ly here with me this af­ter­noon... I have some ties in Tabaquite through an aunt of mine who was the prin­ci­pal of the Tor­tu­ga Pri­ma­ry School and it’s al­ways felt like a sec­ond home to me, so it’s time to make it my first home... I think my chances are pret­ty good with the con­stituen­cy chair­man be­hind me.”

A to­tal of three con­stituen­cies were screened yes­ter­day.

PNM Tabaquite dra­ma

Mean­while, peo­ple in the camp of re­ject­ed Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Anil Ramjit are al­leg­ing cor­rup­tion with­in the par­ty’s Tabaquite con­stituen­cy as the rea­son for his re­moval.

Ac­cord­ing to some mem­bers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty out of fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, Ramjit was al­leged­ly pres­sured to award con­tracts to two of­fi­cials and to over­look pre­vi­ous­ly award­ed con­tracts and ig­nore how the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive man­aged its funds. They said Ramjit feused to do so and fired the of­fi­cials.

Mem­bers claimed the two of­fi­cials then col­lab­o­rat­ed with the con­stituen­cy’s ex­ec­u­tive, lead­ing chair­man Cur­tis Shade to in­form the PNM’s screen­ing com­mit­tee that Ramjit no longer had their sup­port, ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ing in his re­moval as a can­di­date.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive pulled its sup­port from Ramjit.

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia reached out to one of the al­leged of­fi­cials, he rub­bished all claims.

He said the en­tire al­le­ga­tion made no sense, since Ramjit was on­ly the prospec­tive can­di­date and did not have the pow­er to award any con­tract or do any­thing for any­one.