Gail Alexan­der

Al­though Port-of-Spain May­or Louis Lee Sing yes­ter­day con­demned for­mer PNM leader Patrick Man­ning's "Walk For Democ­ra­cy", his daugh­ter-in-law, Lau­rel, a PNM ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, joined Man­ning's walk yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. Lau­rel Leza­ma-Lee Sing, who is the PNM's youth of­fi­cer (fe­male), and PNM Gen­er­al Coun­cil mem­ber Joel Primus joined the sec­ond leg of Man­ning's walk at yes­ter­day's San Juan start­ing point. Man­ning is walk­ing from Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do over sev­en days to protest his sus­pen­sion from Par­lia­ment and high­light Gov­ern­ment's treat­ment of oth­er na­tion­al is­sues.

Ac­com­pa­nied by sup­port­ers, Man­ning left San Juan at 3.30 pm, walk­ing the East­ern Main Road in­to the Uri­ah But­ler High­way. They ar­rived at the con­clu­sion of that leg at Grand Bazaar around 4.45 pm. Brav­ing pun­ish­ing sun­shine, Man­ning re­ceived warm smiles, waves, hand­shakes and words of en­cour­age­ment from peo­ple who came out on the route to watch the PN­Mites pro­ceed to drum­mers' beat. Again yes­ter­day, sole rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the com­ple­ment of PNM MPs was MP Ali­cia Hospedales. Leza­ma-Lee Sing is al­so the on­ly mem­ber of PNM's ex­ec­u­tive to take part in Man­ning's walk.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, Lau­rel's fa­ther-in law, Lee Sing, dis­missed Man­ning's walk as "fool­ish­ness", de­scrib­ing those who fol­lowed Man­ning as be­ing "led in­to a sana­to­ri­um." The may­or said Man­ning had "lost it" and he was to blame for T&T's cur­rent state. He ad­vised Man­ning to go preach the gospel as he had once promised. Lee Sing al­so crit­i­cised for­mer min­is­ters Gary Hunt and Mustapha Ab­dul Hamid who are in­volved in the walk. But Leza­ma-Lee Sing, af­ter walk­ing with Man­ning, said she had not heard what her fa­ther-in-law had said and had not spo­ken to him about it.

Say­ing she would con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate in Man­ning's walk, Lau­rel added:"I'm team PNM and I sup­port my par­ty's lead­er­ship. As I un­der­stand it the par­ty has lent its sup­port to the San Fer­nan­do East's ini­tia­tive.

"I sup­port what the walk stands for-jus­tice and democ­ra­cy. I feel strong­ly an in­jus­tice was done. "Gov­ern­ment has used its ma­jor­i­ty to take ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion in Par­lia­ment and I stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the mem­ber of my par­ty against it." Leza­ma-Lee Sing said she an­tic­i­pat­ed more peo­ple would join the march on the week­end when peo­ple were not work­ing.

Man­ning, Hunt and Ab­dul-Hamid al­so shrugged off Lee Sing's com­ments with a no com­ment po­si­tion.

Primus said he was on the walk due to the many na­tion­al is­sues. He added: "Some­one needs to stand up and say to the Gov­ern­ment we want them to re­think po­si­tions. "I will hope there can be greater lev­el of ma­tu­ri­ty in the PNM and peo­ple can get past the whole no­tion of 'Patrick Man­ning' and see the val­ue of the PNM stand­ing as a unit­ed force rep­re­sent­ing prin­ci­ples for the peo­ple.

"The PP has failed T&T and it's im­por­tant for the PNM to stand to­geth­er, so I will hope PNM lead­er­ship would take stock, be ma­ture and un­der­stand it's not about Man­ning but T&T." MP Amery Browne said yes­ter­day he would join the walk lat­er. He added: "One of the roles of the Op­po­si­tion is to hold the Gov­ern­ment to ac­count. Gov­ern­ment has been do­ing very, very poor­ly and we wel­come any av­enue with which cit­i­zens can re­flect their dis­plea­sure at Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance." To­day's walk starts from Grand Bazaar, end­ing at En­deav­our.