Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

While the UNC’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment nom­i­nee screen­ing be­gins this af­ter­noon—start­ing with nom­i­nees for South ar­eas—the PNM’s screen­ing be­gins on Sat­ur­day with San­gre Grande and Ari­ma nom­i­nees.

This was con­firmed by of­fi­cials of both par­ties yes­ter­day.

And UNC deputy leader Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John says they will con­test all 141 LG seats.

The PNM is al­so con­test­ing 141 seats. There are cur­rent­ly 139 seats. Two more—in Cou­va and Ma­yaro—were added by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC), which al­so changed 22 bound­aries.

A bill to fa­cil­i­tate the LG elec­tions with­in the next three months was passed in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. This be­came nec­es­sary fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s May 18 judg­ment deem­ing as un­law­ful, Gov­ern­ment’s ex­ten­sion LG term last year. The bill al­so val­i­dates the terms of coun­cils up to May 18 and their ac­tions.

The bill was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Mon­day and in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day. Fol­low­ing as­sent and procla­ma­tion, it’s ex­pect­ed an elec­tion date will be an­nounced soon by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and writs of elec­tion will be sent to the EBC. Spec­u­la­tion is on a date be­tween mid-Ju­ly and Au­gust 18.

UNC’s screen­ing ear­ly this af­ter­noon will be at the par­ty’s Ch­agua­nas head of­fice. The screen­ing team leader is UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

John said UNC will start with screen­ing south nom­i­nees. She said the par­ty had nom­i­nees ful­ly in hand for the cur­rent 139 seats last De­cem­ber when the LG term was ex­pect­ed to end—and more than enough for the 141 seats.

John said, “We not­ed height­ened re­sponse to our nom­i­na­tion call from youths and new faces which can on­ly bode well for T&T’s fu­ture.

“We’re go­ing af­ter every cor­po­ra­tion with the same dili­gence and com­mit­ment - to re­tain UNC cor­po­ra­tions and re­move PNM in oth­ers.”

John, who said many new peo­ple came for­ward, was mum on queries about pos­si­ble ac­com­mo­da­tion with small­er par­ties. She said a screen­ing con­clu­sion date isn’t set since screen­ing team mem­bers have Par­lia­men­tary sit­tings in be­tween

“This will be a very ro­bust cam­paign con­sid­er­ing that many in T&T are suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of the PNM’s ‘equal op­por­tu­ni­ty bru­tal­i­ty’,” John added.

PNM screen­ing Sat­ur­day in Grande, Ari­ma

The dead­line for the PNM’s nom­i­na­tions is to­mor­row (Fri­day), con­tin­ues over the week­end and in­to next week. The screen­ing team is head­ed by PM Row­ley.

With par­ty head­quar­ters Bal­isi­er House still un­der con­struc­tion, the PNM will screen at venues in the 14 cor­po­ra­tion ar­eas. Screen­ings be­gin at 3 pm and are ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue late in­to the night, par­ty of­fi­cials added.

On Sat­ur­day, screen­ing for San­gre Grande’s eight dis­tricts and Ari­ma’s sev­en dis­tricts will be at the Ari­ma Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. On Sun­day, screen­ing is for the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co cor­po­ra­tion’s 14 ar­eas at the Cas­ca­dia ho­tel in St Ann’s.

PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Fos­ter Cum­mings didn’t an­swer texted queries on the ex­er­cise yes­ter­day.

Apart from many in­cum­bents from each par­ty sub­mit­ting nom­i­na­tions, changes will be made in key ar­eas by both sides.