Gail Alexan­der

“I’m a born sur­vivor - I was born to sur­vive.”

With that line, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters yes­ter­day cel­e­brat­ed the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM’s) of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment of his se­lec­tion as the par­ty’s Moru­ga-Table­land can­di­date.

The se­lec­tion was of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced yes­ter­day by PNM Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing. She al­so an­nounced the se­lec­tion of Re­bec­ca De­onar­ine as the can­di­date for the Siparia con­stituen­cy.

The PNM al­so con­tin­ued screen­ing last night for sev­er­al ar­eas.

Pe­ters is a for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro.

He wasn’t cho­sen by the UNC for 2015 elec­tions but will now be con­test­ing against UNC’s Moru­ga can­di­date Michelle Ben­jamin.

Yes­ter­day’s of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment on Pe­ters came five days af­ter he was screened by the PNM’s screen­ing team last Thurs­day. No de­ci­sion was giv­en then, lend­ing to spec­u­la­tion on whether he’d ac­tu­al­ly be cho­sen.

How­ev­er, the of­fi­cial se­lec­tion of Pe­ters has made the PNM-UNC bat­tle for Moru­ga of­fi­cial, and it’s al­so of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion that in­cum­bent MP Lovell Fran­cis will be a one-term MP.

Pe­ters said yes­ter­day he had reached out to Fran­cis last Sun­day and Mon­day and Fran­cis asked him to text him.

On whether Fran­cis’ help may be forth­com­ing for the cam­paign, Pe­ters said he was await­ing Fran­cis’ re­ply to his text mes­sage.

He said he hoped all would be on board for the cam­paign.

“I don’t think peo­ple have to be asked. It’s elec­tions, we all work... in the last elec­tion I helped Dr Fran­cis. But there’s no bad blood here, we’re all work­ing for one com­mon pur­pose which is to win the elec­tion and the Moru­ga con­stituen­cy and keep T&T rolling for­ward pos­i­tive­ly,” he said.

Pe­ters who has many rel­a­tives in Moru­ga, al­so said he’d been walk­ing through parts of the con­stituen­cy last week­end and had al­so met last week with pro­tes­tors who re­cent­ly staged a demon­stra­tion against his nom­i­na­tion.

“We spoke and I un­der­stood their po­si­tion. Peo­ple will al­ways be at­tached to cer­tain peo­ple and when there’s change, peo­ple may re­act as they’ve be­come ac­cus­tomed to oth­ers. I un­der­stand it’s an emo­tion­al is­sue. But Kizzy (one of the pro­tes­tors) and oth­ers apol­o­gised to me and T&T and I told them I un­der­stood their po­si­tion - all is for­giv­en.”

“I’ve al­so been able to speak to the youths, they know this is the same par­ty and we’re go­ing to work on their goals and en­sure PNM’s re­turned to Gov­ern­ment. What­ev­er the com­mu­ni­ties’ plans are, I’m here to rep­re­sent.”

On whether Pe­ters is pre­pared to en­ter Op­po­si­tion bench­es if the PNM’s elec­tion re­sults hap­pen to go that way, he replied, “I’m PNM and I go wher­ev­er the par­ty goes- but PNM is not go­ing in­to Op­po­si­tion.”

His last word was for the UNC, “I’ve nev­er paid at­ten­tion to the in­nu­en­do/al­le­ga­tion the UNC had about me so I have noth­ing to over­come there.”