Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has rung the elec­tion bell for Ch­agua­nas West yet the UNC (the rul­ing par­ty in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion) is yet to set up an elec­tion screen­ing com­mit­tee to field can­di­dates.How­ev­er, par­ty in­sid­ers said the elec­tion might be a three-way race be­tween the UNC, PNM and pos­si­ble Jack Warn­er if he de­cides to con­test in­de­pen­dent­ly be­cause he might not get the nod from the UNC to con­test the seat.

Up to late yes­ter­day, it was un­cer­tain whether the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice would take part in the elec­tion while the Con­gress of the Peo­ple has al­ready opt­ed out of the race.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, a UNC par­ty ac­tivist said screen­ing, train­ing and "strate­gis­ing" were still out­stand­ing.The source added: "We have to es­tab­lish a list of ap­pli­cants who have filed nom­i­na­tions on be­half of the par­ty. Once this is done, the par­ty will set up a screen­ing com­mit­tee and they will make a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter and the na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive."We have not set up a screen­ing com­mit­tee and there is no time­line as yet for screen­ing. The na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive has to or­gan­ise all of this."Once a se­lec­tion is made, the name of the nom­i­nee will have to be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the EBC, via a let­ter from the gen­er­al sec­re­tary, in­di­cat­ing this is the per­son who rep­re­sents the par­ty sym­bol."

The of­fi­cial al­so said an elec­tion strat­e­gy com­mit­tee would then com­pile a sched­ule of meet­ings to be held through­out the con­stituen­cy."We will have mo­bil­i­sa­tion through­out the var­i­ous par­ty groups and prepa­ra­tions for the train­ing of elec­tion agents, poll clerks and oth­er elec­tion day per­son­nel. That will be done by the UNC's par­ty school, head­ed by Joe Sir­ju," the of­fi­cial added.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the An­ju­man Sun­nat ul Jam­mat As­so­ci­a­tion (AS­JA) Ya­coob Ali said he was grate­ful Per­sad-Bisses­sar called the elec­tion be­fore the start of Lailat­ul Qadr (the last ten nights of the fast of Ra­madan)."We met with her and re­quest­ed that the elec­tion not be held in the last ten nights and we are hap­py she lis­tened be­cause in the last ten nights, Mus­lims are not ex­pect­ed to in­dulge in world­ly af­fairs," he added.Ali said the pe­ri­od of Lailat­ul Qadr will be­gin at 6 pm on Ju­ly 29.