Gail Alexan­der

Sur­prised but en­er­gised and ready to in­ject new life in­to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM’s) fight for Tabaquite, is how re­tired po­lice in­spec­tor Michael Seales yes­ter­day de­scribed the par­ty’s de­ci­sion to make him the Tabaquite gen­er­al elec­tions can­di­date.

He was ini­tial­ly nom­i­nat­ed and screened last Thurs­day for Cou­va North.

PNM Port-of-Spain (PoS) South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald who is now be­fore the courts on cor­rup­tion charges, has not com­ment­ed on a re­cent re­port that she’s “back” and wants to ”fight” the seat again for elec­tions.

Nor did she com­ment on re­ports that she re­cent­ly sub­mit­ted a con­sent let­ter to be nom­i­nat­ed.

In PoS South, nom­i­nees are con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Wen­dell Stephens and Bri­an Lewis.

The for­mer got two par­ty group nom­i­na­tions and the lat­ter, one.

The unit has 16 fi­nan­cial groups.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Mc­Don­ald said she was deal­ing with a home plumb­ing is­sue and couldn’t speak. She didn’t an­swer sub­se­quent calls. Screen­ing for PoS South is on Thurs­day.

The var­i­ous de­vel­op­ments arose yes­ter­day as the PNM pre­pared to re­sume fi­nal screen­ings of nom­i­nees to­day and con­tin­u­ing on Thurs­day.

The par­ty has so far screened for 26 of the 41 con­stituen­cies and has ap­proved can­di­dates for the ma­jor­i­ty.

PNM pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing yes­ter­day an­nounced the par­ty had cho­sen Seales in Tabaquite af­ter he was screened last Thurs­day.

She said an­oth­er Cou­va North nom­i­nee, busi­ness­woman Shar­da Sack­ram, was cho­sen for Cou­va North.

On why Seales was shift­ed to Tabaquite, a UNC strong­hold, Leza­ma-Lee Sing, said, “We had a pool of very good can­di­dates com­ing for­ward in Cou­va North; more­over, Mr Seales is a very strong can­di­date with na­tion­al recog­ni­tion.”

Last Sat­ur­day Seales’ team said he was open to be­ing placed wher­ev­er the par­ty want­ed him.

Yes­ter­day Seales said, “I’m a bit sur­prised and I wel­come the de­ci­sion. It means the PNM has con­sid­ered and has faith that I can tran­si­tion in­to the new re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. (UNC Cou­va North MP) Ra­mona (Ram­di­al) is lucky she got away. I’m now set­ting my sights on Tabaquite.”

While ad­mit­ting to hav­ing lim­it­ed knowl­edge of Tabaquite, Seales added, “I in­tend to im­me­di­ate­ly be­gin to de­vel­op up­on what I know of the area as an agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty with re­tail busi­ness­es. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly en­er­gized about this seat since I’ll be seek­ing rap­port with the youths to re­turn them to the elec­toral process. They must be able to get their voic­es heard and de­ter­mine their own fu­ture”

Seales said he in­tends to try to bring the com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er and “pro­mote Tabaquite as a south­ern jew­el con­stituen­cy”.

“I’m look­ing for­ward to meet­ing the peo­ple and learn­ing their views and needs to see how this can be met and im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing. This will be a new start for Tabaquite with a sup­port­ing strong spir­it,” he said.

Out­go­ing Tabaquite MP Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan told Guardian Me­dia, “Who­ev­er PNM puts up, Tabaquite is a safe UNC seat - I won it by 4,000 votes in 2015.”

The UNC screened sev­er­al peo­ple for Tabaquite last week, but none was sub­se­quent­ly an­nounced. UNC par­ty ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials couldn’t say yes­ter­day who, if any­one, was cho­sen.

The PNM Cou­va North’s unit yes­ter­day stat­ed it will work with who­ev­er the par­ty choos­es.

The PNM’s Tabaquite unit had two can­di­dates be­fore the de­ci­sion on Seales. The Tabaquite chair­man didn’t an­swer calls.

Mean­while, PNM’s Leza­ma- Lee Sing said PNM will to­day an­nounce its de­ci­sion on the Moru­ga/Table­land’s can­di­date.

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Win­ston Pe­ters was the sole nom­i­nee screened for the seat last Thurs­day.

Yes­ter­day, Moru­ga of­fi­cials said Pe­ters was again walk­ing the area and met with the leader of the group who protest­ed against his nom­i­na­tion.

The PNM will al­so an­nounce its Siparia choice to­day.

Mean­while, the PNM Point Fortin of­fi­cials said last week­end, PNM’s Point Youth League vot­ed to sup­port re­tired as­sis­tant po­lice com­mis­sion­er Don­ald De­noon for the nom­i­na­tion.

He’s the fron­trun­ner nom­i­nee whom ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials are sup­port­ing. Point Fortin may­or Kennedy Richards was al­so tipped as the nom­i­nee. The Point Fortin nom­i­nees in­clude in­cum­bent Ed­mund Dil­lon who was screened re­cent­ly, but the unit was ad­vised to ex­pand its search.