Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

In a sur­prise move last night, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sacked the pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced can­di­date for Ma­yaro Roger Morales and an­nounced a new re­place­ment–busi­ness­man Rush­ton Paray.He was one of five peo­ple screened for the mar­gin­al Ma­yaro seat, pre­vi­ous­ly held by Win­ston 'Gyp­sy' Pe­ters.

Paray, who worked with Pe­ters close­ly dur­ing his cam­paign said his main pri­or­i­ties for the con­stituen­cy are up­grad­ing in­fra­struc­ture and pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for the peo­ple of the rur­al con­stituen­cy.Af­ter his name was an­nounced as a can­di­date for Ma­yaro, a video sur­faced on so­cial me­dia with him crit­i­cis­ing pos­si­ble cor­rup­tion in the Gov­ern­ment.

An­oth­er puz­zling an­nounce­ment was that of Dr Bhoe Tewarie, who will be con­test­ing the Ca­roni Cen­tral seat un­der a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) tick­et.Tewarie, a for­mer prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, has al­ways been an ar­dent Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) sup­port­er.

Weeks be­fore the elec­tion, Tewarie said he was will­ing to serve on any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Last night, COP po­lit­i­cal leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, who is con­test­ing the St Au­gus­tine seat con­grat­u­lat­ed Tewarie even though he has left the folds of the COP, in favour of the UNC. The COP, un­der Ra­mad­har, al­so had the crit­i­cal mar­gin­als of Tu­na­puna and San Fer­nan­do West go over to the UNC. The COP, which con­test­ed 13 seats in the 2010 elec­tion will now con­test eight.

Sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple close to Per­sad-Bisses­sar were al­so giv­en the nod for Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress safe seats. These in­clud­ed Bar­ry Padarath, Per­sad-Bisses­sar's per­son­al as­sis­tant who was se­lect­ed to con­test the seat of Princes Town. That seat was pre­vi­ous­ly held by Nizam Baksh, a politi­cian who served un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion.

An­oth­er sup­port­er Ramesh Ram­nanan, a Petrotrin work­er of Rousil­lac, got the nod for La Brea while ac­tivist and for­mer UWI Guild pres­i­dent Ravi Rati­ram will con­test the mar­gin­al seat of Point Fortin.Fol­low­ing its an­nounce­ment on Fri­day night of 24 con­firmed can­di­dates, the UNC will now con­test 28 of the 41 seats, while its part­ners will share the re­main­ing 13 seats.

The three Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) can­di­dates Em­bau Mo­heni, Kathy Ann Fran­cis and Mal­colm Ker­na­han will con­test the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Laven­tille East/Mor­vant and the Laven­tille/West seats re­spec­tive­ly, while the two TOP can­di­dates Joseph Fred­er­ick and Natasha Sec­ond will con­test the To­ba­go East and West seats.