sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has an­nounced com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Khem­raj Sunil Seecha­ran as its can­di­date for the Feb­ru­ary 7 Debe South by-elec­tion.

The UNC an­nounced this yes­ter­day af­ter screen­ing was com­plet­ed for nom­i­nees on Wednes­day.

The PNM had screened nom­i­nees on Thurs­day and se­lect­ed busi­ness sec­tor su­per­vis­er Judy Sookdeo to con­test the seat.

The UNC had held the seat and pre­dicts it will again re­take Debe South.

The UNC stat­ed Seecha­ran was born and raised in Debe South.

“He is an en­ter­pris­ing and de­ter­mined young man with a pas­sion for peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ty and cul­ture, com­ing from a fam­i­ly that was al­ways in­volved in com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and de­vel­op­ment.”

He was the found­ing chair­man of the Pe­nal Debe Foun­da­tion, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion ad­vo­cat­ing for dis­as­ter mit­i­ga­tion and cham­pi­oning dis­as­ter and com­mu­ni­ty re­lief.

The UNC stat­ed Khem­raj’s mantra is “To­geth­er We Can.”

The par­ty said Seecha­ran is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing the burgess­es of Debe South with prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion af­ter UNC claimed burgess­es were “de­nied rep­re­sen­ta­tion by this dic­ta­to­r­i­al PNM gov­ern­ment for al­most one year, fol­low­ing the death of Pur­shot­tam Singh.”