Gail Alexan­der

There has been no re­sponse from the Gov­ern­ment on the Op­po­si­tion’s re­quest to con­sid­er Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan for the Pres­i­den­cy—there­fore it’s ex­pect­ed Gov­ern­ment will be sign­ing all 12 slots on the form nom­i­nat­ing Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo for the post.

And, the UNC will al­so be sub­mit­ting its nom­i­na­tion for Khan by to­mor­row.

This, as some quar­ters have called for both sides to re­solve the mat­ter.

The term of in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes ends March 20. The Elec­toral Col­lege meets on Jan­u­ary 20 to elect a Pres­i­dent.

Weekes, cur­rent­ly on va­ca­tion, re­turns on Thurs­day.

Kan­ga­loo was an­nounced as Gov­ern­ment’s nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent while she was act­ing in the post dur­ing Weekes’ ab­sence.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley made the an­nounce­ment last Fri­day.

The Op­po­si­tion, which doesn’t sup­port Kan­ga­loo on the ba­sis of her be­ing an ac­tive politi­cian, last Sat­ur­day re­quest­ed the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er Khan (head of the Crim­i­nal Bar of T&T) for the post.

Yes­ter­day, UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark dou­bled down on UNC’s op­po­si­tion to Kan­ga­loo.

A no­tice from the Clerk of the House Jacqui Samp­son-Meiguel re­cent­ly ad­vised MPs that the nom­i­na­tion form must be signed by 12 House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives mem­bers. It must state the nom­i­nee’s full name, ad­dress, oc­cu­pa­tion and their pro­posers and the lat­ters’ con­stituen­cies.

The no­tice stat­ed the du­ly com­plet­ed nom­i­na­tion form should be de­liv­ered no lat­er than to­mor­row.

Al­so yes­ter­day, UNC of­fi­cials said they re­ceived no word from Gov­ern­ment on the re­quest to con­sid­er Khan for the post. They said if noth­ing was forth­com­ing, UNC’s nom­i­na­tion of Khan would be sub­mit­ted to the House Speak­er’s of­fice by close of busi­ness to­mor­row.

While the UNC has enough MPs to sup­ply the re­quired 12 sig­na­tures to nom­i­nate a can­di­date of its own, the elec­tion in­volves a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote and can be car­ried by Gov­ern­ment’s votes alone.

There have been two can­di­dates for the post of Pres­i­dent be­fore—in 1997 with Arthur NR Robin­son nom­i­nat­ed by the UNC Gov­ern­ment and Jus­tice An­tho­ny Lucky by the Op­po­si­tion PNM. Al­so, in 2003, when George Maxwell Richards was nom­i­nat­ed by the PNM Gov­ern­ment and Ganace Ram­di­al by the Op­po­si­tion UNC. In each case, the Gov­ern­ment’s nom­i­nee was elect­ed.

Mean­while, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce stat­ed yes­ter­day, “We look for­ward to the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion work­ing to­geth­er to come to an agree­ment on a suit­able can­di­date.”

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said while both Kan­ga­loo and Khan are good can­di­dates, he didn’t be­lieve the Gov­ern­ment would sup­port Khan since he’d seemed “a loose can­non and they wouldn’t be able to con­trol him, where­as with Kan­ga­loo they may be­lieve they’d get her sup­port when­ev­er they call for it. So she won’t be trust­ed.

“Be­cause of this, we’ll have to wait and see how she car­ries her­self in the job. I’d be in­ter­est­ed to see if (At­tor­ney Gen­er­al) Regi­nald Ar­mour sup­ports his ‘friend’ Khan who had de­fend­ed him in the Law As­so­ci­a­tion’s de­bate in the Mi­a­mi case.”