Cori Baynes

The Bap­tist Women's League has voiced strong crit­i­cisms against all those peo­ple op­posed to the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Bap­tist move­ment. With a gen­er­al elec­tion due with­in the next three months, Bap­tist moth­er Mer­le Nicholas spoke out against all de­trac­tors. She was speak­ing at a Women's League cel­e­bra­tion of Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion and an Er­ic Williams memo­r­i­al lec­ture held at the PNM San Fer­nan­do West con­stituen­cy of­fice on Tues­day. Al­so in at­ten­dance were San Fer­nan­do West MP Ju­nia Re­grel­lo and for­mer MP for that con­stituen­cy, Ralph Maraj.

Maraj, who served un­der both the PNM and UNC ad­min­is­tra­tions, is at present in the PNM's cor­ner, and was the chair­man at its pub­lic meet­ing in St Au­gus­tine last Mon­day. "Fire go bun dem... All the peo­ple that don't like the PNM and don't like the Bap­tist, fire go bun dem," Nicholas said. She said in spite of pub­lic crit­i­cism about the rul­ing par­ty and her faith, both en­ti­ties were here to stay and "would not be moved." Lash­ing out at the op­po­si­tion par­ties, Nicholas added that the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) would dis­solve and dis­ap­pear like many oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties of the past.

"There has been the DLP and many oth­ers and just now we will ask where is the COP?" she said. Re­grel­lo, who al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, ex­pressed con­fi­dence for both him­self and the par­ty at the polls.

Draw­ing ref­er­ence to his Bap­tist past, he said: "I get so much bush bath when I was small that I can­not lose any elec­tions." He con­tin­ued that a vic­to­ry at the polls is the par­ty's main fo­cus and urged all to re­mem­ber Williams in this elec­tion time. "As a con­stituen­cy and a par­ty, we can­not com­pro­mise the her­itage which Dr Williams painful­ly built," he said. "We must en­sure that the lega­cy of a strong par­ty pre­vails as a nec­es­sary pre­req­ui­site for any dy­nam­ic and pro­gres­sive na­tion."