Gail Alexan­der

The PNM’s screen­ing of lo­cal gov­ern­ment nom­i­nees for the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion area on Sun­day is in­com­plet­ed as the con­stituen­cy was asked to find more nom­i­nees for three elec­toral dis­tricts, ac­cord­ing to par­ty of­fi­cials.

They said the out­stand­ing Tu­na­puna screen­ings are ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed soon. Screen­ing of San Juan/Laven­tille and Port-of-Spain nom­i­nees was due to take place yes­ter­day.

Screen­ing of nom­i­nees for the 16 elec­toral ar­eas in Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co be­gan on Sun­day and the suc­cess­ful prospec­tive can­di­dates se­lect­ed so far are Shel­don Moore (Blan­chisseuse/San­ta Rosa); Derek La Guerre (Cara­po); Regi­nald Kei­th (Cau­ra/Par­adise/Tacarigua); Neela Ma­haraj (Curepe/Pasea); Ker­ry Ann Kas­mal­ly (Waller­field La Hor­quet­ta); La­Toya Greaves Tin­to (St Au­gus­tine South/Pi­ar­co/St He­le­na); De­siree De Fre­itas Fos­ter (Five Rivers); Ali­cia Ali (Kel­ly Vil­lage/War­renville); Dwayne Mo­ra (La Floris­sante/Lopinot); De­sell Josian Austin (Ma­coya/Trin­i­ty); Trudel Nor­eiga (Mara­cas/San­ta Mar­gari­ta) and Stephan Wat­t­ley (Mau­si­ca/Mal­oney).

Par­ty of­fi­cials said the screen­ing for Bon Air/Cane Farm was not com­plet­ed be­cause the nom­i­nee is over­seas. New nom­i­nees are be­ing sought for Au­zonville/Tu­na­puna, Val­sayn/St Joseph, and Cleaver/D’Abadie.

Due to be screened yes­ter­day were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 39 nom­i­nees for the San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion’s 14 ar­eas and about 27 for the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s 12 seats.

To­day, about 28 nom­i­nees from three Diego Mar­tin ar­eas will face the screen­ing com­mit­tee. Af­ter that, the screen­ing will be halt­ed un­til next week as some mem­bers of the screen­ing com­mit­tee will be over­seas.

On Sun­day, prospec­tive UNC can­di­dates Cher­ry Ann Math­lin (Cas­cade/St Ann’s/Mon Re­pos) and Lian­na Babb (Bel­mont East) be­gan walk­a­bouts in those ar­eas.

Math­lin, who re­vealed it was her first time en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, said, “I’m a lit­tle ner­vous, but I’m al­so ex­cit­ed. I had seen the par­ty cam­paign­ing in the area in 2020 and I said, you know what, let me go and walk with them, and the ex­pe­ri­ence was very, very nice.

“I know I’ll be fac­ing oth­er op­po­nents but I’m from the area I’m con­test­ing, I’ve lived here all my life and I can say how much needs to be done all these years. We have no play­ground for the chil­dren, no pave­ments in some ar­eas, so I in­tend to try my best for the peo­ple.”

Babb is mak­ing her third bid to rep­re­sent Bel­mont East. She un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed a by-elec­tion and a Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions for the seat.