KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture, and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell, is set to ap­pear be­fore the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) screen­ing com­mit­tee this week af­ter se­cur­ing the back­ing of the ma­jor­i­ty of La Brea con­stituen­cy groups.

Ac­cord­ing to an in­sid­er, 19 par­ty groups sup­port­ed Mitchell, in­clud­ing the Youth League, Women’s League and con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive.

Con­stituen­cy chair­man Jer­mel Pierre got 12 votes, while two groups might not have par­tic­i­pat­ed.

As a re­sult, Mitchell will face the screen­ing com­mit­tee at Bal­isi­er House on Thurs­day.

This will be the sec­ond screen­ing ses­sion for the con­stituen­cy fol­low­ing the re­jec­tion of cur­rent MP, Min­is­ter of Labour Stephen Mc­Clashie, and Brighton/Ves­signy coun­cil­lor Jil­lon Lewis. An­oth­er nom­i­nee, Siparia al­der­man Stephen Enci­nas, did not at­tend the ini­tial screen­ing due to ill­ness. Enci­nas had se­cured the ma­jor­i­ty sup­port of par­ty groups and the ex­ec­u­tive but with­drew to fo­cus on his re­cov­ery.

Mitchell and Pierre sub­se­quent­ly sub­mit­ted their con­sent for nom­i­na­tion, re­ceiv­ing back­ing from par­ty groups, while re­cent PNM mem­bers Tahar­qa Obi­ka and Ger­maine Bovell-Pitt opt­ed out. Mitchell, who was born in Siparia and at­tend­ed Beach Camp School, is a gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor. He served as the MP for San Fer­nan­do East be­tween 2015 and 2020, suc­ceed­ing for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who had rep­re­sent­ed the con­stituen­cy for 44 con­sec­u­tive years.

Dur­ing that time, he held the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and the Min­is­ter of Tourism port­fo­lios.

In 2020, the par­ty re­placed Mitchell as its can­di­date with Man­ning’s son, Bri­an, who cur­rent­ly holds the seat.

Fol­low­ing un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts by the ini­tial nom­i­nees to win over the screen­ing com­mit­tee for the La Brea and Laven­tille East/Mor­vant con­stituen­cies, nom­i­na­tions were re­opened in De­cem­ber.

The par­ty al­so called for nom­i­na­tions for sev­er­al seats in Port-of-Spain and west Trinidad, with a dead­line set for Jan­u­ary 27.

A par­ty of­fi­cial con­firmed that a date for screen­ing will be an­nounced there­after.