Cer­tain neg­a­tive re­ac­tion arose in some Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment con­stituen­cies yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing the par­ty’s se­lec­tion of new faces to re­place var­i­ous in­cum­bents - and there’s con­cern par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of the re­jec­tion of for­mer Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte for the La Brea seat.

There are sig­nals La Brea in­tends press­ing for Le Hunte.

On Thurs­day, the PNM screened nom­i­nees for sev­er­al spot­light seats, in­clud­ing La Brea.

Par­ty pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing list­ed screen­ing re­sults. The list com­pris­es top sports­woman Cleopa­tra Borel (for Port-of-Spain South), for­mer crick­et star now coach Mervyn Dil­lon (To­co-Man­zanil­la), Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Si­mon de No­bre­ga (DM Cen­tral), Point Fortin may­or Kennedy Richards Jr (Point Fortin) and Clif­ford Ramb­harose (Oropouche East).

Borel will re­place court-em­broiled in­cum­bent MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald. Dil­lon will re­place To­co MP Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith. De No­bre­ga will re­place Dar­ryl Smith and Richards will re­place Point MP Ed­mund Dil­lon.

La Brea's nom­i­nees who were screened were in­cum­bent Nicole Olivierre and Le Hunte. But La Brea's ex­ec­u­tive was asked to widen its search for nom­i­nees. The ex­ec­u­tive must re­turn next week with more names.

Le Hunte had sup­port from 16 of the 19 par­ty groups. But the screen­ing team vot­ed 6-4 to seek more nom­i­nees, How­ev­er, there are sig­nals La Brea’s unit will seek to pur­sue the can­di­da­cy for Le Hunte.

La Brea chair­man Wayne Wood told the T&T Guardian, “The screen­ing team asked us to seek oth­er can­di­dates. In so do­ing, we have to go out and search. The con­stituen­cy is per­haps dis­ap­point­ed that its very strong can­di­date and sub­mis­sions weren’t eas­i­ly at­tend­ed to. Mr Le Hunte has the ex­per­tise, ex­pe­ri­ences and suc­cess­ful track record that made him the choice of ex­ec­u­tive and par­ty groups.

“If there are nom­i­na­tions at this time, we’ll present them by Tues­day. But we do be­lieve Robert is the best can­di­date for us at this time. Our rec­om­men­da­tion stat­ed the im­por­tance of hav­ing him as our can­di­date. He has phe­nom­e­nal sup­port, he bond­ed with com­mu­ni­ty and mem­bers. We hope that com­ing out of this process, the best can­di­date we can present will be the choice."

Word with­in the area is that nom­i­na­tions are ex­pect­ed. But Wood said Le Hunte is a nom­i­nee and he’ll be pre­sent­ing “fur­ther bet­ter in­for­ma­tion” on why the unit would per­se­vere with the case for him,“as he’s the can­di­date of our choice."

Wood was asked if La Brea might adopt a "No Vote" stance if Le Hunte isn’t cho­sen.

He said, “Every elec­tion is sig­nif­i­cant. The peo­ple of La Brea re­quired a can­di­date that will fight for them, stand for them and work in La Brea’s in­ter­ests -- that was Robert Le Hunte. I can say we'll be chal­leng­ing go­ing for­ward build­ing the right mo­men­tum with­out him if that’s the way it is ..."

But Wood dis­missed per­cep­tion the sit­u­a­tion could al­low UNC in­roads or vic­to­ry in the PNM seat.

"We’re PNM to the bone - leave it alone," he said.

Con­tact­ed on the re­jec­tion of his can­di­da­cy, Le Hunte said, “The out­come wasn’t the one I ex­pect­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with hav­ing over­whelm­ing con­stituen­cy sup­port and hav­ing served PNM dili­gent­ly as a hard-work­ing pro­fes­sion­al for 31 years. I be­lieve La Brea’s ex­ec­u­tive is very dis­ap­point­ed and up­set."

On whether his res­ig­na­tion from Gov­ern­ment - which arose af­ter he’d sub­mit­ted nom­i­na­tion for La Brea - may have caused him to lose the can­di­da­cy, he added, “I’m clear in my abil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween nom­i­na­tion and res­ig­na­tion - one was want­i­ng to be a PNM flag bear­er for an area where I was born and bred in. The oth­er in­volved a prin­ci­pled po­si­tion and of­fer­ing my res­ig­na­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter.

"How­ev­er it would ap­pear oth­er peo­ple weren’t clear on be­ing able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the two. Still, I con­tin­ue to feel the prin­ci­pled po­si­tion I took was best prac­tice in keep­ing with the West­min­ster sys­tem which the Prime Min­is­ter loud­ly said re­cent­ly he as­cribes to."

On ris­ing spec­u­la­tion the UNC will woo him to win the PNM strong­hold, Le Hunte said he con­tin­ues to be PNM vice-chair­man and ex­e­cute that role as he’d done with oth­ers “with in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism ... I’ll do what­ev­er’s in keep­ing with PNM’s plans. I’m res­olute the PNM is the best Gov­ern­ment for T&T. My con­sid­er­a­tion and in­tegri­ty won’t al­low me to con­sid­er ad­vances made by any oth­er par­ties."

Olivierre mean­while said no de­ci­sion has been tak­en yet and she was await­ing the com­ple­tion of the screen­ing ex­er­cise.

Kennedy Richards got the nod in Point Fortin de­spite Point ex­ec­u­tive’s sup­port for re­tired as­sis­tant po­lice com­mis­sion­er Don­ald De­noon. Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Fran­cis Bertrand said, “Once ap­proved by the scree­ing team we’ll work with the can­di­date."

PoS South will­ing to sup­port Borel

PoS South ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Wen­dell Stephens, who was screened along with Bri­an Lewis, says Cleopa­tra Borel was the screen­ing team’s choice - not the ex­ec­u­tive’s. He said he saw her for the first time at screen­ing Thurs­day.

Stephens added, “But we’ll sup­port who­ev­er we’re re­quired to and will work to en­sure vic­to­ry."

He said Mc­Don­ald had ex­celled with the ex­ec­u­tive, which is why they’d have sup­port­ed her bid.

“But I imag­ine the ex­ec­u­tive would sup­port the par­ty’s choice and we’ll see how that goes. She has to come up with a plan which we’ll work on," he said.

Stephens said Borel wasn’t from the area and PoS South once had an ex­pe­ri­ence with ex-MP Jean Pierre, who al­so hadn’t been from the dis­trict. Pierre was elect­ed to the seat but he not­ed the ex­ec­u­tive didn’t get along with her and things “went awry." He said the cur­rent ex­ec­u­tive isn’t the same as that one, “but we hope it doesn’t re­cur in this case. Peo­ple don’t know the new can­di­date."

Stephens, how­ev­er, said the UNC won’t win the seat.

“I trust things will set­tle down, elec­tions haven’t been called yet."

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings mean­while said Borel was cho­sen be­cause she was a na­tion­al fig­ure. He was re­spond­ing to queries whether she would fit in with the hotspot con­stituen­cy.

Cum­mings said no nom­i­na­tion was al­so re­ceived for Fuad Abu Bakr - who want­ed to screen for PoS South as well - and who re­mained at the screen­ing lo­ca­tion un­til screen­ing end­ed af­ter mid­night. Cum­mings couldn’t say if Bakr was a PNM mem­ber.

On whether Ari­ma nom­i­nee Pen­ne­lope Beck­les - who’s over­seas - would be screened by tech­nol­o­gy, Cumm­ngs said the usu­al pro­ce­dure is that peo­ple ap­pear be­fore the screen­ing team. He de­clined to say if mech­a­nisms would be arranged, not­ing he was on­ly deal­ing with what was in front of him cur­rent­ly and no date had been set for Ari­ma’s screen­ing.

Ma­yaro nom­i­nee An­to­nio Ross didn’t face screen­ing on Tues­day as he’s in Texas. He’d ex­pect­ed to be screened by vir­tu­al mech­a­nism. But the ex­ec­u­tive was told he didn’t present him­self. Ross sent a let­ter to the PNM on Thurs­day stat­ing he’d with­drawn since he isn’t here.