Gail Alexan­der

The re­spec­tive lead­er­ships of the Op­po­si­tion UNC and mi­nor­i­ty COP par­ty are ex­pect­ed to buck­le down to the fi­nal leg of uni­ty talks in 72 hours, COP chair­man Roy Au­gus­tus said yes­ter­day. COP act­ing leader Wendy Lee Yuen said yes­ter­day that the fi­nal seg­ment of talks be­tween both par­ties was ex­pect­ed no ear­li­er than Mon­day. Lee Yuen spoke yes­ter­day as COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an and COP deputy leader Prakash Ra­mad­har were sched­uled to ar­rive home last night from In­dia and the US, re­spec­tive­ly. UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so gave the as­sur­ance yes­ter­day that she would arrange a meet­ing con­ve­nient to both par­ties re­gard­ing the uni­ty is­sue at the first avail­able op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ter the COP lead­ers re­turned from over­seas.

"I will do every­thing we can to en­sure we have a one-on-one fight with the PNM for this up­com­ing elec­tion," she said. A num­ber of peo­ple are al­ready be­ing tipped from both sides as "uni­ty can­di­dates" for var­i­ous seats. Lee Yuen said,: "We are com­mit­ted to this and there is no doubt this (uni­ty arrange­ment) is go­ing to hap­pen...There's been a mul­ti-pronged ap­proach and talks are un­der way." Au­gus­tus said he was more con­cerned about the foun­da­tion of the sys­tem than seats at this point. COP's screen­ing process be­gins next week. Since both par­ties ap­pear to be mov­ing speed­i­ly on the arrange­ment, names have sur­faced from among of­fi­cials on both sides as pos­si­ble nom­i­nees. Among them, COP deputy leader Ra­mad­har is a pos­si­bil­i­ty for Ca­roni Cen­tral, cur­rent­ly held by MP Hamza Rafeeq, and sports and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Anil Roberts for Port-of Spain-North, now held by PNM's Gary Hunt.

Roberts said yes­ter­day that he was due to be screened on Wednes­day (by COP of­fi­cials). "What­ev­er seat they want me to fight in the unit­ed arrange­ment I will–we're unit­ed to bring back T&T," he said. Al­so tipped was for­mer COP of­fi­cial Ni­rad Tewarie for the Ch­agua­nas East seat held by PNM's Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid. Tewarie re­cent­ly took up a new job which is said to be "sen­si­tive to the pol­i­tics." But a spokesman for Tewarie said yes­ter­day that if of­fi­cial­ly asked by the con­stituen­cy, he "may have to con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion." Oth­er uni­ty can­di­dates tipped are De­vant Ma­haraj (Cou­va South) and Mar­lene Coudray (San Fer­nan­do West). UNC's Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her par­ty had a "mix of sea­soned nom­i­nees, as well as young vi­brant dy­nam­ic" peo­ple, in­clud­ing women. UNC be­gins screen­ing next Tues­day.