Af­ter se­lect­ing prospec­tive gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­dates for Pointe-a-Pierre and Ch­agua­nas East re­cent­ly, the rul­ing PNM will next Tues­day be screen­ing PNM youth of­fi­cer Ndale Young for the San Juan/Barataria gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­da­cy.

Par­ty of­fi­cials con­firmed this yes­ter­day af­ter re­cent screen­ings where Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat was se­lect­ed as the gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date for Ch­agua­nas East and PNM as­sis­tant gen­er­al sec­re­tary Daniel Dook­ie was picked as the Pointe-a-Pierre gen­er­al elec­tion can­di­date. Both were the lone nom­i­nees for the re­spec­tive seats.

Gen­er­al elec­tions are due in 2020. Ramb­harat con­test­ed the Ma­yaro seat in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion and was de­feat­ed by the UNC’s Rush­ton Paray.

Screen­ing of gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­nees con­tin­ues next Tues­day at Bal­isi­er House, where Young, a tem­po­rary PNM sen­a­tor, is ex­pect­ed to be the sole nom­i­nee for San Juan/Barataria, a key mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy.

Yes­ter­day, Ch­agua­nas East hope­ful Ramb­harat told Guardian Me­dia, “I’ve been con­sid­er­ing a cam­paign team and the cam­paign work. It’ll re­quire bal­ance with my min­is­te­r­i­al du­ties, but I’ll put all my en­er­gies in­to this and I be­lieve I’ll be suc­cess­ful. Yes, once again, I’m go­ing in­to dif­fi­cult ter­rain, I know it’s an Op­po­si­tion-held seat, but I know the area well, I have fam­i­ly there and I have a good PNM ex­ec­u­tive. Plus I’ve got good re­spons­es. It’ll de­pend on how as a par­ty we po­si­tion our­selves in the na­tion­al cam­paign, so I ex­pect to do well.”

On Tues­day, PNM will al­so screen nom­i­nees for six ar­eas in the Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion dis­trict. Can­di­dates were se­lect­ed for six oth­er Port-of-Spain Cor­po­ra­tion seats two weeks ago and the Cor­po­ra­tion was sent back to seek nom­i­nees for the oth­er six ar­eas.

Next Mon­day, the par­ty will screen nom­i­nees in­clud­ing for sev­er­al lo­cal gov­ern­ment ar­eas which were ex­am­ined be­fore and man­dat­ed to get new nom­i­nees. That in­cludes nom­i­nees for San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion. The venue for that screen­ing will be the Low­er Mal­abar Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

On Wednes­day, the PNM se­lect­ed can­di­dates for five of the eight Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion seats, nine of the 14 Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro seats and four of the six Ma­yaro seats.