KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

There is a po­lit­i­cal toss-up in the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy, with the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ex­ec­u­tive re­ject­ing its prospec­tive can­di­date, Anil Ramjit, at the last minute, and the can­di­da­cy of in­cum­bent MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, a so-called UNC dis­si­dent, up in the air as screen­ing is set for to­day.

Ques­tions sur­round­ing the rea­sons be­hind Ramjit’s re­moval re­main unan­swered af­ter he was side­lined by the par­ty on Mon­day. But all fin­gers point to the PNM’s Tabaquite con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive, who pulled sup­port from Ramjit at the last minute.

This was con­firmed by PNM’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings, who yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia that the Tabaquite con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive had a change of heart. He said the con­stituen­cy now has two weeks to present new nom­i­nees, push­ing back the com­ple­tion of the PNM’s screen­ing process. The par­ty has al­ready se­lect­ed 40 of its 41 can­di­dates.

Cum­mings said, “In the case of Mr Ramjit, the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive re­moved their sup­port for Mr Ramjit as well as the con­stituen­cy co­or­di­na­tor for that area. As a re­sult of that, we were left with no al­ter­na­tive but to seek new nom­i­na­tions. Once that con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive has a change of heart, then the par­ty will be left with no choice but to re­con­sid­er our po­si­tion, which we have done, and as a re­sult, Mr Ramjit has been in­formed that his can­di­da­cy has been with­drawn.”

Asked what rea­sons the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive gave for pulling its sup­port from Ramjit, he said, “I can’t say. I don’t know.”

Asked why Ramjit was not in­formed be­fore the PNM is­sued a pub­lic re­lease, he said, “He has been since in­formed. I don’t have the time­frame, but he has been in­formed. The process was strict­ly fol­lowed. We got in­for­ma­tion from the ex­ec­u­tive last evening, and Mr Ramjit has been in­formed, so we are out look­ing for new nom­i­nees.”

How­ev­er, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that Ramjit was on­ly con­tact­ed by a staff mem­ber from Bal­isi­er House on Tues­day morn­ing.

Seek­ing to get to the bot­tom of the is­sue, Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Cur­tis Shade, the PNM’s con­stituen­cy chair­man, who hung up the tele­phone on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions.

An­oth­er ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber told Guardian Me­dia that the com­mit­tee has to meet to dis­cuss the on­go­ing dra­ma be­fore speak­ing out.

But, ac­cord­ing to PNM stal­wart and a for­mer mem­ber of the PNM’s screen­ing com­mit­tee, Fer­die Fer­rera, it is not un­com­mon for a prospec­tive can­di­date to be dropped.

Fer­rera said, “This is quite nor­mal. Re­mem­ber, you are not a can­di­date un­til nom­i­na­tion day, but if they (the screen­ing com­mit­tee) find out that there is some­thing that could be em­bar­rass­ing to the par­ty about you, then they could re­ject you. There are peo­ple who were se­lect­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, and you get to find out some in­for­ma­tion about them, you have a skele­ton some­where hid­ing.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to PNM’s 2020 Tabaquite gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date, re­tired po­lice in­spec­tor Michael Seales but he did not want to com­ment on the is­sue.

Seales has al­so not in­di­cat­ed an in­ter­est in of­fer­ing him­self to be screened nor has any­one from the PNM reached out to him on the mat­ter. In 2020, Seales ini­tial­ly screened for the con­stituen­cy of Cou­va North but was switched to rep­re­sent Tabaquite.

Mean­while, UNC is sched­uled to screen at least four nom­i­nees, in­clud­ing its 2020 San Fer­nan­do West can­di­date Sean Sobers, busi­ness­man Eli Za­k­our, UNC events man­ag­er Ke­van Gibbs, and Haynes-Al­leyne.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to get her views on the PNM re­ject­ing Ramjit—a for­mer UNC mem­ber—but she be­lieves it will make no dif­fer­ence whom the PNM choos­es.

She said, “It makes no dif­fer­ence; UNC will win the seat and the gen­er­al elec­tion.”

Guardian Me­dia was al­so in­formed that Haynes-Al­leyne was warned that there may be some push­back from sup­port­ers at UNC head­quar­ters to­day.

She said, “I did hear from some very con­cerned res­i­dents that per­sons were reach­ing out to them to come out to boo and heck­le sup­port­ers to­mor­row at my screen­ing at the UNC head­quar­ters, and I would urge per­sons not to put the par­ty in any po­si­tion where it can be em­bar­rassed ahead of the gen­er­al elec­tion.”

Asked if any­one from the PNM con­tact­ed her to be screened for Tabaquite, she said no.

Haynes will be the third and fi­nal so-called dis­si­dent MP to go be­fore the UNC’s screen­ing com­mit­tee.

Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray and Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly were al­ready screened, while Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir an­nounced last week that he re­fused to be screened by Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her mem­bers.

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles will be re­tir­ing at the end of his term.