Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pro­voked raw "To­ba­go love" yes­ter­day evening as she met the Fri­day evening crowd at Scar­bor­ough. Per­sad-Bisses­sar walked the busy streets,shak­ing hands, kiss­ing ba­bies and gen­er­al­ly greet­ing scores of To­bag­o­ni­ans who lined up to meet her. She lat­er said she was thrilled at the "won­der­ful hos­pi­tal­i­ty" she en­joyed dur­ing the pub­lic walk­a­bout she mount­ed as she took a break from the Gov­ern­ment work­shop on the is­land.Mar­ket ven­dors, shop­pers, chil­dren, street limers, taxi men and youths sip­ping beers warm­ly greet­ed the Prime Min­is­ter in her first pub­lic ap­pear­ance in To­ba­go since her May 24 elec­tion vic­to­ry.

Dressed in black and sport­ing her char­ac­ter­is­tic smile, Per­sad-Bisses­sar chat­ted ami­ably, lis­tened to lit­tle old ladies, wished chil­dren the best at school and ut­tered folksy par­lance to street men. "Rush up and shake she han'," a mid­dleaged woman told her school-age daugh­ter. Then, when the child did as she was told, her moth­er de­clared: "Woman is boss! We proud ah she! We first fe­male prime min­is­ter!" There were sim­i­lar cho­rus­es through­out the fre­net­ic ex­er­cise, with some To­bag­o­ni­ans claim­ing that Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pre­de­ces­sor, Patrick Man­ning, had nev­er walked the is­land's streets. One man dec­o­rat­ed the Prime Min­is­ter with a bead­ed chain in the na­tion­al colours.

An en­am­oured woman plead­ed: "Stay close to the ground, eh. We doh want to lose you." Sev­er­al min­is­ters ac­com­pa­nied Per­sad- Bisses­sar, among them, To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin. Oth­er gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials were al­so pop­u­lar with To­bag­o­ni­ans, most no­tably Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, from whom many peo­ple so­licit­ed hand­shakes. At the end of the walk­a­bout, Per­sad- Bisses­sar ex­pressed grat­i­tude to To­bag­o­ni­ans and as­sured that her ad­min­is­tra­tion would be fair to the is­land. She al­so praised Ash­worth Jack, leader of To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple