RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) chair­man Dave Tan­coo says the re­sults of the screen­ing for the Na­pari­ma and Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cies will be an­nounced this week.

Tan­coo al­so con­firmed that one can­di­date for Fyz­abad was al­so screened on Fri­day, af­ter miss­ing the ear­li­er ses­sion due to be­ing out of the coun­try.

Hun­dreds of sup­port­ers gath­ered at the par­ty’s head­quar­ters on Fri­day night as over a dozen can­di­dates were screened for the UNC safe seats.

Among the can­di­dates vy­ing for the Na­pari­ma seat were Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, coun­cil­lor Chris Ar­shad Ho­sein and at­tor­ney Kami­ni Ram­raj, who has the en­dorse­ment of for­mer MP Nizam Baksh.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Baksh praised Ram­raj for her years of ded­i­ca­tion to the Na­pari­ma con­stituen­cy.

“Kami­ni worked in my con­stituen­cy of­fice for over a decade, and af­ter that, she went on to serve the com­mu­ni­ty as an at­tor­ney. She has my full sup­port,” Baksh said.

He said Ram­raj, a sea­soned le­gal pro­fes­sion­al, had sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ty and was viewed as a strong con­tender for the Na­pari­ma seat, which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a UNC strong­hold.

How­ev­er, par­ty sources said Lutch­me­di­al, an­oth­er fron­trun­ner, had the best chance to win the seat.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Lutch­me­di­al said: “I think it went well, but there are many good per­sons will­ing to of­fer them­selves in ser­vice to the par­ty.”

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Lutch­me­di­al high­light­ed her leg­isla­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, say­ing, “I be­lieve my ex­pe­ri­ence in the Sen­ate has been in­valu­able, and I want to use it now not just to ad­vo­cate on na­tion­al is­sues but to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the peo­ple of Na­pari­ma.”

Mean­while, MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, who is seek­ing re-elec­tion in Ch­agua­nas West, said he is al­low­ing the screen­ing process to un­fold while re­main­ing fo­cused on his con­stituents.

“This MP work didn’t make Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly. I was al­ready out in the com­mu­ni­ty, help­ing var­i­ous groups be­fore I be­came an MP,” he said.

Ram­bal­ly high­light­ed his ac­com­plish­ments, in­clud­ing a crick­et camp that ben­e­fit­ted over 350 chil­dren na­tion­wide, and his work with en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Ed­ward Mood­ie to ad­dress flood­ing along the Ca­roni Riv­er.

“We’ve been on the river­bank at 2 am dur­ing heavy rains, try­ing to mit­i­gate flood­ing. Ch­agua­nas West needs in­fra­struc­tur­al work in ar­eas like Ad­jo­ha, War­ren Ram­lakhan Trace, and Al­li­ga­tor Trace. Ex­tor­tion runs deep in Cen­tral busi­ness­es, and I’ve been lob­by­ing with the busi­ness cham­ber to tack­le these is­sues,” he ex­plained.

Ad­dress­ing his strained re­la­tion­ship with the UNC lead­er­ship, af­ter he broke rank along with Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray for last year’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, Ram­bal­ly said, “If peo­ple don’t agree with my strat­e­gy of putting peo­ple first, we will have prob­lems. My ap­proach has al­ways been peo­ple-first.”

—RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA