Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Per­cy Vil­lafana, the 81-year-old man who start­ed the now sym­bol­ic "Do So" trend was over­come with emo­tion on Mon­day night. This af­ter it was de­clared that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had seized the Gov­ern­ment with a land­slide vic­to­ry of 29 to 12. Around mid­night Vil­lafana, of Re­al Street, San Juan, en­tered UNC head­quar­ters, Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, where he was greet­ed with thun­der­ous ap­plause and his now fa­mous crossed arms "X" sign. The pen­sion­er shot in­to the lime­light in March when he re­fused to al­low out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in­to his prop­er­ty.

Vil­lafana, who ap­peared emo­tion­al, told sup­port­ers gath­ered: "You have made a dif­fer­ence." He said when he stopped Man­ning from en­ter­ing his home he did not an­tic­i­pate the wave of sup­port re­ceived. Vil­lafana ad­mit­ted that he did not en­vi­sion that he would have in­spired such a change in T&T. "I thought that I could have made a dif­fer­ence and tonight (Mon­day) I am see­ing it. You (the sup­port­ers) re­al­ly made a dif­fer­ence," he said. Vil­lafana urged the packed up­per floor of the UNC head­quar­ters not to act in haste.

"Be calm, be cool and the Peo­ple's Par­ty is go­ing to pro­vide you with what you need. It (this coun­try) is go­ing to have a good run­ning Gov­ern­ment and you make Trinidad and To­ba­go a proud coun­try in the whole wide world," Vil­lafana said. The crowd went wild as they cheered and dis­played the "Do So" sign. Vil­lafana was ush­ered off stage and tak­en to the Rien­zi Com­plex carpark where an­oth­er stage was set up to ad­dress the hun­dreds of sup­port­ers who de­scend­ed at the head­quar­ters.

The Cou­va Main Road was blan­ket­ed by a sea of yel­low as sup­port­ers held a mas­sive street par­ty to cel­e­brate Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship vic­to­ry. Stephen Cadiz, the new­ly-elect­ed Ch­agua­nas East MP, told the crowd: "It was won­der­ful vic­to­ry for us. It is a won­der­ful vic­to­ry for the par­ty. Good­bye (Mustapha) Ab­dul-Hamid (the for­mer PNM Ch­agua­nas East MP)." Per­cy Vil­lafana, right, shows the now sym­bol­ic "Do So" while be­ing cheered on by Na­pari­ma MP Nizam Baksh.