Yvonne Webb

In a sym­bol­ic ges­ture to sig­ni­fy their voice has been si­lenced in the Par­lia­ment, sup­port­ers of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning placed mask­ing tape over their mouths as they mount­ed a silent protest out­side his San Fer­nan­do East Con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day evening.The ges­ture has been used in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to bring out po­lit­i­cal and so­cial change. Yes­ter­day, in a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty, main­ly fe­male sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), dressed in red T-shirts, used plac­ards to car­ry the mes­sage of dis­con­tent with Mon­day's sus­pen­sion of the man who has led them for 40 years.

Un­der the watch­ful eyes of the po­lice, the 50-odd sup­port­ers marched in front of the Cof­fee Street of­fice, with plac­ards which read: "Give us back our voice"; "Rise above pet­ti­ness"; "Gov­ern­ment is in con­tempt of our democ­ra­cy"; "Kam­la rise - time to fall"; "Great is the PNM and it shall pre­vail".Man­ning is in Cu­ba un­der­go­ing med­ical treat­ment and is due to re­turn to the coun­try on Fri­day.Con­stituen­cy chair­man Tina Gron­lund-Nunez said they in­formed Man­ning, as well as the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the PNM, of their course of ac­tion, which would con­tin­ue in­def­i­nite­ly. She said it was a con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion.She said there would be a spe­cial gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing to­day and a reg­u­lar gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing on Sat­ur­day and ex­pect­ed the hi­er­ar­chy of the par­ty would take some de­ci­sions on what course of ac­tion they would pur­sue in light of the sus­pen­sion.

Asked about the small num­ber of sup­port­ers who re­spond­ed to their call, Gron­lund-Nunez said she was sur­prised by the size of the turnout, giv­en that the de­ci­sion was on­ly made hours ear­li­er.She said there was a show­ing of peo­ple from oth­er con­stituen­cies, in­clud­ing Cou­va.She added: "The PNM is one par­ty. We might be 41 con­stituen­cies but we are all one par­ty. We stand shoul­der-to-shoul­der, es­pe­cial­ly when one mem­ber is knocked down in our Par­lia­ment."Asked why the de­ci­sion to take such ac­tion when un­der Man­ning's ad­min­is­tra­tion an­oth­er for­mer prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, was sus­pend­ed, Gron­lund-Nunez said:

"I can­not speak on how oth­er par­ties re­act to such ac­tion."The peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East strong­ly be­lieve with the voice be­ing tak­en away from the Par­lia­ment, they no longer have a voice."Telling her that some may ar­gue that the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do East has not had a voice for the past year be­cause the rep­re­sen­ta­tive has been silent, Gron­lund-Nunez said she dis­agreed with that per­cept