The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s D’Abadie O’Meara ex­ec­u­tive will to­day present six nom­i­nees to screen for the seat. They in­clude Ari­ma may­or Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, a for­mer Ari­ma deputy may­or and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als—but no par­ty of­fi­cials.

D’Abadie O’Meara chair­man Her­man Noel said yes­ter­day that no nom­i­na­tion had been re­ceived from PRO Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing, whose name had been re­port­ed else­where. Leza­ma-Lee Sing was pre­vi­ous­ly screened for Lopinot Bon Air but wasn’t cho­sen.

The nom­i­nees are be­ing screened this evening at Queen’s Hall, Port-of-Spain. Screen­ing is nec­es­sary af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley last Sun­day pulled D’Abadie O’Meara in­cum­bent can­di­date An­cil An­toine from the gen­er­al elec­tion team. This was af­ter An­toine made in­sen­si­tive and ob­jec­tion­able re­marks about the Unit­ed States dur­ing a cam­paign launch last Sat­ur­day.

In a record­ing which was post­ed on Face­book, An­toine is heard say­ing, “Amer­i­ca is a sh**hole coun­try. I’m sor­ry to say that, right? And we have to make sure that we don’t al­low Amer­i­cans to come in­to Trinidad. You know all those Amer­i­cans, those Trinida­di­ans, who run in­to Amer­i­ca and need to send back all their bar­rels and so forth. Make sure you tell them to stay out of Trinidad for the rest of the year. All your fam­i­ly and them.”

PNM PRO Laurel Lezama-Lee Sing on her way to be screened for the PNM Lopinot/ Bon Air West seat at Queens Hall, St Ann’s recently.

ANISTO ALVES

An­toine apol­o­gised via so­cial me­dia, say­ing he made a state­ment of in­dis­cre­tion. He said he asked Row­ley to with­draw from PNM’s elec­tion team.

It was the sec­ond time An­toine’s com­ments had at­tract­ed neg­a­tive spot­light Two weeks ago he was al­so un­der fire af­ter mak­ing heat­ed re­marks to con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tives over their re­port­ed fail­ure to sup­port his nom­i­na­tion.

Yes­ter­day, Noel said new the nom­i­nees are Mor­ris-Ju­lian, Ari­ma coun­cil­lor Bren­nan Pat­ter­son, Sateish Ojah-Ma­haraj, at­tor­ney Shevon Nereiga, one-time deputy Ari­ma may­or Lenore Pan­file and en­er­gy sec­tor em­ploy­ee Eileen Black­man.

Noel said An­toine has in­di­cat­ed he’d be will­ing to as­sist the new can­di­date.

The seat is the fi­nal one the PNM has to com­plete se­lec­tion for. Be­fore An­toine’s re­moval, the PNM had all 41 can­di­dates. Forty of them were be­ing rat­i­fied by the cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive last evening.

The T&T Guardian con­firmed that the video with An­toine’s re­marks was sent to the US Em­bassy last Sat­ur­day af­ter he spoke. The sit­u­a­tion comes on the heels of T&T try­ing to move on from strained re­la­tions with the US. That sit­u­a­tion de­vel­oped fol­low­ing UNC state­ments about a fu­el ship­ment sold by Paria Fu­el Trad­ing to fu­el ty­coon Wilmer Ru­per­ti which is al­leged to have end­ed up in Venezuela and the vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez for a meet­ing with Row­ley in March.