The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has named five more can­di­dates se­lect­ed to con­test the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a re­lease on Sat­ur­day, par­ty of­fi­cials con­firmed the lat­est five in­clud­ed Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Sad­dam Ho­sein for San Juan/Barataria; Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly for Ch­agua­nas West; Flo­ra Singh for Ari­ma; Mau­rice Hoyte for D'Abadie/O'meara; and Nabi­la Greene for To­co/San­gre Grande.

The par­ty’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer Ani­ta Haynes said the UNC had com­plet­ed screen­ing of all can­di­dates and would an­nounce the oth­er names in the com­ing weeks.

Karim: I went in­to the screen­ing hope­ful

Mean­while, Ch­agua­nas East MP, Fazal Karim said last Wednes­day’s screen­ing ex­er­cise could not have gone bet­ter.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Sat­ur­day, he said, "The dis­cus­sions were quite pos­i­tive and I re­main con­fi­dent in our par­ty’s lead­er­ship to take us to vic­to­ry in 2020."

Karim, who is hop­ing to re­turn for an­oth­er term said, "I went in­to the ex­er­cise very hope­ful and op­ti­mistic and I left in the same spir­its, be­cause of my long-stand­ing his­to­ry with the par­ty and my track record of ser­vice and per­for­mance in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties over the years.

"I am a found­ing mem­ber of the par­ty and have been work­ing tire­less­ly on the ground since my late teenage years, even be­fore its in­cep­tion, from the days of the ULF, then Club 88, and now the UNC."

Hav­ing served as the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the UNC from 2000, Karim has helped to build its foun­da­tion and frame­work be­cause of his be­lief in the par­ty, democ­ra­cy and "his de­ter­mi­na­tion to serve the peo­ple of T&T in a mean­ing­ful way."

The son of a fa­ther who worked his en­tire life in the sug­ar in­dus­try, Karim said, "With very lit­tle for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, he worked his way up by learn­ing new skills and trades along the way, which al­lowed him to put his chil­dren through school. From a young age, I have had such a deep un­der­stand­ing of the way ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing can trans­form lives and gen­er­a­tions for that mat­ter. I am a fam­i­ly man, and I like to be on the ground meet­ing peo­ple and hear­ing from them."

Asked about his track record which would be eval­u­at­ed and would form the ba­sis of se­lec­tion for an­oth­er term, Karim said, "There is no ques­tion that I have ded­i­cat­ed my life to ser­vice and the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion through ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing." Karim served as min­is­ter of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and then ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and skills train­ing.

"I was pas­sion­ate about widen­ing ac­cess to high­er ed­u­ca­tion for all of our cit­i­zens through the ex­pan­sion of the GATE pro­gramme, and de­cen­tralised and spe­cialised cam­pus­es at UTT and COSTAATT among many oth­er ini­tia­tives"

He said one of the things he was most proud of is "el­e­vat­ing the sta­tus and recog­ni­tion of vo­ca­tion­al work through tar­get­ed ini­tia­tives to in­crease the qual­i­ty and num­ber of skills train­ing pro­grammes across the coun­try."

When he be­came an MP for the first time in Ch­agua­nas East, Karim ad­mit­ted the seat was won by a very nar­row mar­gin.

In the last five years, Karim said he has worked dili­gent­ly to main­tain con­tact with con­stituents through walk­a­bouts and com­mu­ni­ty projects.

In his ini­tial days as MP, Karim de­vel­oped a five-year strat­e­gy for build­ing up the con­stituen­cy in crit­i­cal ways and "fol­lowed that to com­ple­tion even with min­i­mal re­sources."

Karim com­mend­ed the com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, re­li­gious bod­ies and oth­er stake­hold­ers in the con­stituen­cy as he said, "To­geth­er we have rolled up our sleeves and de­liv­ered projects for deal­ing with crime, ed­u­ca­tion, health and well­ness, in­fra­struc­ture, agri­cul­ture and of course to sup­port con­stituents dur­ing pe­ri­ods of dis­tress due to flood­ing, eco­nom­ic down­turn and most re­cent­ly, the fall­out of COVID-19 and the lock­down pe­ri­od. In the process, I have cre­at­ed some ex­treme­ly mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships with con­stituents and stake­hold­er groups that I will cher­ish for the rest of my life."