Gail Alexan­der

UNC Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath who is over­seas has con­tact­ed the par­ty on when he’ll be screened and has been told the par­ty will “be in touch with him” on it.

Padarath who’s been in Mi­a­mi since March when T&T’s bor­ders closed, con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion Fri­day. Padarath re­cent­ly sought leave from the Par­lia­ment un­til month-end.

Padarath has been in the US look­ing af­ter his 10-month-old ba­by daugh­ter Se­jai. He said he was nom­i­nat­ed for Princes Town and had spo­ken to UNC’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary on when screen­ing might be. But par­ty gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dev Tan­coo said no date for Princes Town’s screen­ing was sched­uled.

Padarath said he raised the is­sue of whether screen­ing would be done by tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms. He said he was as­sured that it wasn’t that he wouldn’t be screened and the par­ty would “be in touch” with him on the screen­ing.

Tan­coo didn’t an­swer on the is­sue Fri­day.

Padarath said “What­ev­er the par­ty de­cides I’ll go with it, my sup­port is for my par­ty and leader. No one’s big­ger than the par­ty...I don’t need a par­ty to fight the PNM as I’ve done in the past.“

Padarath added, “Gov­ern­ment needs to say if it will be call­ing gen­er­al elec­tions while the bor­ders are closed and if the 330,000 peo­ple they say are out­side will be dis­en­fran­chised - that should not be.”

On Thurs­day Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar who’d slammed any pos­si­ble move by Gov­ern­ment for call­ing polls with bor­ders closed, had al­so de­mand­ed that Gov­ern­ment call elec­tions im­me­di­ate­ly.

Mean­while, af­ter Ca­roni East MP Tim Gopeesingh on Thurs­day an­nounced he wasn’t con­test­ing, at­ten­tion is now fo­cused on those who ear­li­er this year filed nom­i­na­tion for Ca­roni East - celebri­ty chef Ja­son Pe­ru, Ca­roni East chair­man Dr Richad Seecher­an and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Kirk Meighoo. The hus­band of a South cloth­ing re­tail­er (whom UNC sources al­so tipped) said he wasn’t in the race.

Oth­er in­cum­bents have said they filed nom­i­na­tions, are await­ing screen­ing and hadn’t stepped down. They in­clud­ed UNC’s Roodal Mooni­lal, Rudy In­dars­ingh, Bhoe Tewarie, Rush­ton Paray and oth­ers. COP MP Prakash Ra­mad­har hasn’t yet de­ter­mined his di­rec­tion.

UNC MPs screened so far are David Lee, Rod­ney Charles and Lack­ram Bo­doe.

On so­cial me­dia spec­u­la­tion Charles may be re­placed by a pop­u­lar UNC coun­cil­lor, Charles said he couldn’t com­ment on that, “...But what­ev­er the par­ty de­cides I’m 110 per cent be­hind them," he added.

Of UNC’s 17 MPs, those out so far are Gopeesingh and MPs Su­ruj Ram­bachan and Gan­ga Singh. Ram­bachan said he re­tired from pol­i­tics. Singh opt­ed out due to dis­agree­ment with the lead­er­ship on his call for a unit­ed Op­po­si­tion force of all par­ties. UNC’s 10 can­di­dates which in­clude new young faces al­so in­clude some un­suc­cess­ful can­di­dates from the Cit­i­zen’s Al­liance par­ty of years ago.