Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­ba­go Coun­cil has of­fi­cial­ly closed nom­i­na­tions in eight elec­toral dis­tricts for the up­com­ing To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions, with 21 in­di­vid­u­als fil­ing to con­test un­der the par­ty’s ban­ner.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the par­ty yes­ter­day, the as­pi­rants will now go to the next phase of the in­ter­nal process. They will first be re­viewed by their re­spec­tive dis­trict par­ty groups, be­fore mov­ing on to the PNM screen­ing com­mit­tee, which will de­ter­mine the fi­nal slate of can­di­dates.

How­ev­er, nom­i­na­tions re­main open in sev­en oth­er elec­toral dis­tricts un­til June 11.

The re­main­ing dis­tricts are: Bagatelle/Ba­co­let, Belle Gar­den/Glam­or­gan, Ma­son Hall/Mo­ri­ah, Mt St George/Good­wood, Par­latu­vi­er/L’Anse Four­mi/Spey­side, Rox­bor­ough/Ar­gyle and Scar­bor­ough/Mt Grace.

The par­ty said it was com­mit­ted to an open and fair se­lec­tion process and is en­cour­ag­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans who are pas­sion­ate about pub­lic ser­vice and com­mu­ni­ty lead­er­ship to of­fer them­selves for con­sid­er­a­tion.

The next THA elec­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due in De­cem­ber.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has al­ready made it clear no ear­ly elec­tion will be called un­less his team agrees to it.

The last THA elec­tion in 2021 re­sult­ed in a 14-1 win for the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP), which Au­gus­tine was once a part of be­fore re­sign­ing from it and form­ing the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP).