Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Mem­bers of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s La Brea and Laven­tille East/Mor­vant con­stituen­cies will be at the par­ty’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters to­day for the screen­ing of gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nees.

The par­ty has 32 prospec­tive can­di­dates. There were pre­vi­ous­ly 33 but the can­di­date se­lect­ed for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, Na­dia Ram­ta­hal-Singh, has dropped out. Ram­ta­hal-Singh, an en­to­mol­o­gist at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, had in­di­cat­ed that if she didn’t get time off from her job to cam­paign she couldn’t re­sign. Con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials said she in­di­cat­ed last week that she was drop­ping out as she didn’t get time off.

New nom­i­nees for Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la will be sub­mit­ted on Mon­day, along with nom­i­nees for Diego Mar­tin West, Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Diego Mar­tin North East, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West, Port-of-Spain South and D’Abadie/O’Meara.

To­day’s screen­ings will take place from 5 pm, when nom­i­nees will be in­ter­viewed by a team led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Con­tin­gents of sup­port­ers for La Brea’s two nom­i­nees will be at Bal­isi­er House. The nom­i­nees are con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Jer­mel Pierre and Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell. Mitchell has the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port from par­ty groups, in­clud­ing La Brea’s ex­ec­u­tive and its Women and Youth Leagues.

Push­back against Mitchell came yes­ter­day from Quin­cy “Ten Com­mand­ments” Joseph, who said he’s a La Brea com­mu­ni­ty leader and de­por­tee who runs the group “No Youth Left Be­hind. He will be at Bal­isi­er House to­day.

He claimed Mitchell “didn’t want to work” with his group and there were min­istry con­tract is­sues. Joseph said it wasn’t about PNM or UNC and he would sup­port any­one “who works in my com­mu­ni­ty’s in­ter­est.”

Sup­port­ers of the five Laven­tille East/Mor­vant nom­i­nees will al­so be at Bal­isi­er House. How­ev­er, mem­bers of the con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive are hop­ing for an eleventh-hour change of heart by in­cum­bent MP Adri­an Leonce who didn’t show up for screen­ing on De­cem­ber 2 cit­ing per­son­al is­sues. Leonce hasn’t re­spond­ed to ques­tions about whether he would re­con­sid­er and at­tend the screen­ing to­day.

Nom­i­nees for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant are Dr Je­re­my In­niss, Tracey East­man, David Simp­son, Christo­pher Birch­wood and coun­cil­lor Ju­nior St Hi­laire.

But af­ter a meet­ing last night con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber told Guardian Me­dia they want Leonce as the can­di­date, and would tell PNM’s lead­er­ship that at to­day’s screen­ing ex­er­cise.

Con­stituen­cies whose nom­i­nees will be pre­sent­ed on Mon­day in­clude Diego Mar­tin West, where in­cum­bent MP, Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley, will not be seek­ing re-elec­tion.

Con­stituen­cy of­fi­cials yes­ter­day con­firmed that me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Hans Des Vi­gnes now has sup­port of 14 of the 25 par­ty units. Yokym­ma Bethelmy has sup­port from five par­ty units, An­na Suleiman has none, Cur­tis Tou­s­saint has two par­ty groups and Lese­di Fe­lix has none. For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne dropped out last Fri­day.

The ex­ec­u­tive hasn’t met yet on nom­i­nees.

Oth­er nom­i­nees be­ing sub­mit­ted Mon­day will be for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, where in­cum­bent MP Symon De No­bri­ga is ex­pect­ed to be the sole nom­i­nee and Diego Mar­tin North East, where in­cum­bent MP Colm Im­bert is al­so ex­pect­ed to be the sole nom­i­nee.

In­cum­bents for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West and Port-of-Spain South, Stu­art Young and Kei­th Scot­land, are ex­pect­ed to be nom­i­nat­ed un­op­posed, sources said.

Al­so be­ing sub­mit­ted Mon­day are nom­i­nees for D’Abadie/O’Meara, whose MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian died in a fire with two of her chil­dren at her Ari­ma home on De­cem­ber 16.

Sources said Do­minick Ro­maine, a ra­dio talk show host and so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ty, has been added to the list of nom­i­nees for that seat.

The oth­ers are at­tor­ney San­jiv Boodoo, Cal­vary coun­cil­lor Je­niece Scott, con­stituen­cy chair­man Gillian Lewis, Ari­ma al­der­man Derek King, Cara­po coun­cil­lor Derek Le Guerre, Ari­ma North­east coun­cil­lor Kim Gar­cia-John, Ari­ma Cen­tral coun­cil­lor Shel­don Gar­cia and ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fi­cers Kristi­na James, Brit­ney Pierre and Louan­na Pam­phille.