Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

De­spite sus­tain­ing in­juries to her shoul­der, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, moves in­to Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day's Cou­va North con­stituen­cy to­day to launch her se­ries of meet­ing con­stituents through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. "Yeah, I am bet­ter, but it (the in­jury) is still very painful," Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day. She added that she and oth­er UNC na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive (Na­tEx) mem­bers were prepar­ing for the launch of their "Meet the Con­stituents Tour," which would com­mence with a pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing around 6 pm to­day at Chan­der­nagore Pres­by­ter­ian School, South­ern Main Road, Chase Vil­lage. Ac­cord­ing to UNC chair­man, Jack Warn­er, the meet­ings are in­tend­ed to be an on­go­ing ex­er­cise "to con­struct the bridge be­tween the peo­ple and the lead­er­ship." "It is our an­swer to the call to bring peo­ple clos­er to gov­er­nance," Warn­er said.

Dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Warn­er de­nied that the UNC Na­tEX was cam­paign­ing in Cou­va North to so­lic­it sup­port from Pan­day's fol­low­ers. "She (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) does not have to demon­strate the need for sup­port from Mr Pan­day. She has the sup­port that she needs," Warn­er said. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been shar­ing an es­tranged re­la­tion­ship with Pan­day af­ter she suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged him for the po­si­tion of UNC po­lit­i­cal leader last month. Warn­er al­so de­nied that Cou­va North was the area cho­sen to kick off the UNC's cam­paign be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter can­vassed there last week Mon­day.

He said the PNM was en­gag­ing in a se­ries of walk­a­bouts and cot­tage meet­ings be­cause Man­ning was pan­ick­ing from the sup­port that Per­sad-Bisses­sar gar­nered in the re­cent UNC in­ter­nal elec­tions. "We planned these con­stituen­cy walk­a­bouts long be­fore the Prime Min­is­ter be­gan to pan­ic," Warn­er said. "The Prime Min­is­ter's walk­a­bouts are a re­ac­tion to him pan­ick­ing based on the (UNC in­ter­nal) elec­tion re­sults that he saw and there­fore, quite un­der­stand­able he is try­ing to counter that based on Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­sults in the elec­tions." He ex­plained that the UNC was ini­ti­at­ing its cam­paign in Cou­va be­cause it rep­re­sent­ed the area that Per­sad-Bisses­sar first launched her cam­paign for UNC lead­er­ship.

Meet the peo­ple tour

With lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions re­quired to be held in less than sev­en months, Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her ri­val, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, would be en­gag­ing vot­ers in sep­a­rate walk­a­bouts this af­ter­noon. Man­ning would con­tin­ue his cam­paign­ing in the con­stituen­cies of Laven­tille East and West.