Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

"I was born a Trinida­di­an and will die one," says Per­cy Mar­tin Vil­lafana, as he dis­miss­es Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's state­ment that he is not a cit­i­zen of T&T, but of Win­nipeg, Cana­da. Dis­play­ing proud­ly a T&T iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, Vil­lafana, 81, de­scribed Man­ning as "pig-head­ed." He was speak­ing about the in­ci­dent dur­ing the Prime Min­is­ter's walk­a­bout in San Juan last week. An out­spo­ken Vil­lafana, who has no re­grets for his ac­tions, said if giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty again he would do the same thing. The el­der­ly man grabbed head­lines last week when he crossed his hands and blocked the Prime Min­is­ter from en­ter­ing his Re­al Street, San Juan home.

"There are so many more im­por­tant things to do, and the Prime Min­is­ter takes the time to in­ves­ti­gate me. "I vis­it my four chil­dren abroad and re­turn to my home every year. I have no idea what the Prime Min­is­ter is speak­ing about. "I am a cit­i­zen of T&T for the past 81 years; I was born and grew up in this house and will die here. I am Tri­ni to the bone; so I do not know where he got his in­for­ma­tion from. "The time he is tak­ing to in­ves­ti­gate me he should be fix­ing the cur­rent state of the coun­try...It is be­cause of this I can­not sup­port the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment."