Gail Alexan­der

Deputy Port-of-Spain may­or Hillan More­an is among sev­er­al peo­ple be­ing nom­i­nat­ed for the PNM’s Port-of-Spain South seat.

More­an con­firmed his po­si­tion among nom­i­nees on Tues­day.

Last week, PoS South was man­dat­ed to seek nom­i­nees again af­ter ini­tial­ly se­lect­ed can­di­date Cleopa­tra Borel was dropped due to her dual US/T&T cit­i­zen­ship. Nom­i­nees will be screened by PNM’s screen­ing team to­day.

The PoS South ex­ec­u­tive was meet­ing last night to con­sid­er pro­posed nom­i­nees named.

Apart from More­an, PoS South ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said names in­clude man­age­ment con­sul­tant Cheryl Ann Reyes, Nico­la Har­vey (non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion ac­tivist/Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty mem­ber) Kent Tay­lor, coun­cil­lor Aba Ka­mau.

A top Port-of-Span at­tor­ney was al­so said to be con­sid­er­ing, but he didn’t con­firm his po­si­tion to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

More­an is in his sec­ond term as Port-of-Spain deputy may­or. He said he was ap­proached by PoS South res­i­dents since last week when the ex­ec­u­tive was sent back to seek nom­i­nees.

“I thought about it and prayed, about it. I’d al­so spo­ken with the ex­ec­u­tive and to quite a few par­ty groups. One has nom­i­nat­ed me. I’m await­ing feed­back from oth­ers,” More­an added.

More­an said he was ac­cus­tomed to get­ting queries from youths in his area on why he hadn’t vol­un­teered to be­come an MP, “so to ex­pand the abil­i­ty to of­fer a role mod­el, I con­sid­ered it this time.”

Af­ter Tues­day’s protests in­clud­ing in PoS South, More­an was asked if he was pre­pared to serve in Op­po­si­tion if re­sults came to that.

More­an replied, “I’m pre­pared to serve the par­ty in all ways and fash­ion. But I’m con­fi­dent the peo­ple will see the hard work the PNM’s put in­to T&T in the last term and will re­turn us to gov­ern­ment.”

UNC Ca­roni Cen­tral wants Tewarie over oth­ers

Al­so, UNC’s Ca­roni Cen­tral con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive ex­pressed sol­id sup­port for in­cum­bent Bhoe Tewarie on Tues­day when UNC lead­er­ship of­fi­cials in­ter­viewed the ex­ec­u­tive on nom­i­nees screened re­cent­ly.

A Ca­roni Cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive spokesman said their group was asked about nom­i­nees for the seat in­clud­ing Tewarie, Arnold Ram, a fe­male nom­i­nee and UNC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Dev Tan­coo.

On queries whether Ca­roni Cen­tral’s ex­ec­u­tive would sup­port any­one else if Tewarie wasn’t cho­sen, ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said they told the pan­el they are 100 per cent be­hind Tewarie and wouldn’t sup­port any­one else. On ques­tions they were asked about Tan­coo, ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said his name was a sur­prise to them, they knew him on­ly as the gen­er­al sec­re­tary and they gave an opin­ion on Tan­coo.

The ex­ec­u­tive - which de­clined to be sep­a­rat­ed to give their opin­ion on nom­i­nees - said they’d come with one voice. They said while it was al­right to have new MPs, but one couldn’t re­move lead­ers and Tewarie was a leader in T&T.

Yes­ter­day ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers said they sim­ply echo the con­stituen­cy’s sup­port for Tewarie, “He’s worked very hard. The peo­ple see that they know him, trust him and seek his coun­sel.”

Last Fri­day, the UNC’s Cou­va South ex­ec­u­tive was al­so asked by two top UNC of­fi­cials whether the area might ac­cept a new can­di­date - a UNC of­fi­cial - in­stead of in­cum­bent Rudy In­dars­ingh. But UNC Cou­va ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Shar­ma Sook­nanan - who de­clined com­ment on that re­port- said the ex­ec­u­tive stands unan­i­mous­ly be­hind In­dars­ingh whom he said did a great job for the last 10 years.