Jesse Ramdeo

Scat­tered show­ers across south Trinidad did not damp­en the usu­al flare which Nom­i­na­tion Day has grown ac­cus­tomed to and even de­spite calls to ad­here to lim­it­ing gath­er­ings to no more twen­ty-five, scores of par­ty sup­port­ers ral­lied be­hind their re­spec­tive can­di­dates who inched clos­er to en­ter­ing the elec­tion gayelle.

Al­though he did not agree with an­a­lysts that San Fer­nan­do West was a swing seat, in­cum­bent PNM MP Faris Al-Rawi turned up at the of­fice of the re­turn­ing of­fi­cer to file nom­i­na­tion pa­pers mi­nus the fan­fare which ac­com­pa­nied his op­po­nent UNC’s Sean Sobers.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said the threats posed by COVID-19 could not be ig­nored and had even still been re­ceiv­ing re­ports along his cam­paign trail. “I feel con­fi­dent about it. It’s why I’ve come by my­self to­day. We’re in a COVID pan­dem­ic.

We have to re­al­ly man­age our­selves care­ful­ly be­cause T&T did not come first in the world by mis­take.

As for anom­alies, you’ll see a lot of peo­ple wear­ing yel­low t-shirts on times, oc­ca­sion­al­ly they said to me, boss, they pay­ing $400 a day to walk. I could tell you we walk with vol­un­teers in the PNM.”

A short prayer ser­vice pre­ced­ed the UNC’s Sean Sobers march to the Cipero Street Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cers of­fice. He said based on the word on the ground, his chances at the polls seemed favourable.

“So far the re­cep­tion has been ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive and I think I’m go­ing to do pret­ty well at the polls.”

He said un­der-rep­re­sen­ta­tion re­mained a ma­jor thorn in the sides of con­stituents.

“They in­di­cat­ed the in­cum­bent, for what­ev­er rea­son, has been ab­sent and they would re­al­ly want an MP who is ac­ces­si­ble and will de­liv­er.”

For one San Fer­nan­do East can­di­date, yes­ter­day rep­re­sent­ed much more than the moko jumbies and mu­sic trucks, but about car­ry­ing on the lega­cy of his fa­ther.

Years af­ter ac­com­pa­ny­ing her late hus­band and for­mer prime min­is­ter com­plete the sim­i­lar process, Hazel Man­ning’s emo­tions ran high when she flanked her son’s side as he took the sim­i­lar route and lit­er­al­ly walked in his fa­ther’s foot­steps.

“I think he’s do­ing very well, I’m very proud of what he’s do­ing and how he’s do­ing it he has not been in­to the mud­sling­ing he’s looked at the big pic­ture and work­ing on the big pic­ture, his vi­sion and ap­proach is dif­fer­ent,” she said.

In the swing seat of Point-a-Pierre, it was a friend­ly face-off among sup­port­ers of the par­ties con­test­ing the seat.

The PNM’s Daniel Dook­ie and MSJ’s David Ab­dul­lah will be hop­ing to un­seat in­cum­bent MP David Lee.