CRICKETER-turn-broadcast commentator Samuel Badree is heavily favoured to contest the Moruga-Tableland constituency for the People’s National Movement in the upcoming general election.
Forty-three-year-old Badree, who lives in Barrackpore in the rural electoral constituency, is preferred by the party’s leadership ahead of other contenders.
Officials at Balisier House feel the cricketer’s popularity and resident status could help the party wrest the marginal seat from the United National Congress.
In the 2020 general election, UNC’s Michelle Benjamin beat the PNM’s Winston “Gypsy” Peters by 10,534 to 9,462 votes.
But in the 2015 polls, the PNM’s Lovell Francis edged the UNC’s Clifton de Coteau by 10,808 to 10,275 votes.
The Government is currently undertaking extensive improvement works in the constituency, through various State agencies.
Projects include road and bridge rehabilitation, the erection of fishing facilities at Grand Chemin, and construction of a desalination plant to produce 1,000,000 million gallons of water a day.
Various delivery ministries and agencies have been mandated to carry out projects within the next few months.
National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO), Rural Development Company, and Palo Seco Agricultural Enterprises Ltd. are among the organisations undertaking ventures.
The companies have each been given additional budgets, some of which would come from the $10 billion increased borrowing capacity that the Government was recently granted.
Several short-term jobs are being provided and local contractors employed.
Badree, a right-arm spin bowler, played for Trinidad and Tobago, the West Indies and various international franchises.
He was a two-time Men’s T20 World Cup winner.
His latest international T20 match was against Bangladesh, in 2018.
His brief career with the national team ended in 2009.
In recent years, he has morphed into a voluble television cricket commentator.
Badree also served as a senior coordinator for sports development at the Sport Company of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is among several prospective candidates for the ruling PNM, among them being Alderman Kareem Marcelle, to replace Keith Scotland in Port of Spain South.
Former Howard University President Wayne Frederick, a medical doctor, is being touted as a candidate and a likely Health Minister if the PNM returns to national office.
The current Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh, a pharmacist, is facing a square-off in the St. Joseph seat against Gary Griffith, leader of the National Transformation Alliance.
The PNM has been quietly oiling its electoral machinery even as leader, Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has said that “the election will be held when it is due.”
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