Gail Alexan­der

Af­ter block­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning from his yard re­cent­ly, St Joseph res­i­dent Per­cy Vil­lafana has been in­vit­ed to at­tend to­mor­row's "Voice of the Peo­ple" ral­ly be­ing held by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. But Vil­lafana said yes­ter­day that he was un­cer­tain, and yet to de­cide if he would ac­cept the in­vi­ta­tion which he has re­ceived.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar is host­ing a ral­ly ti­tled "Voice of the Peo­ple" at Saith Park in Ch­agua­nas to­mor­row to mo­bilise forces op­posed to the PNM Gov­ern­ment on var­i­ous na­tion­al is­sues. Last week Mon­day, Vil­lafana, 81, blocked Man­ning from his yard dur­ing Man­ning's walk­a­bout in St Joseph. Vil­lafana, a re­tired Agri­cul­ture Min­istry em­ploy­ee, com­plained bit­ter­ly about the Gov­ern­ment. He said he had been a staunch PNM sup­port­er un­til the last cou­ple elec­tions and was now a sup­port­er of "change." He al­so spends time with fam­i­ly in Cana­da. Yes­ter­day, Vil­lafana said that a few days ago, some­one from the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ral­ly had ex­tend­ed to him an in­vi­ta­tion to at­tend. How­ev­er, Vil­lafana said: "I'm still un­de­cid­ed whether I will go or not. If I do go, it will be a last-minute de­ci­sion and I will be among the crowd and not on any­one's plat­form. "I do not want to be af­fil­i­at­ed to any po­lit­i­cal group...I do not want to give the im­pres­sion to Man­ning or any­one that what I did re­cent­ly (block­ing Man­ning from the gate) was a po­lit­i­cal act on be­half of any par­ty," he said. Sound­ing a bit weary with the sit­u­a­tion, Vil­lafana added: "I don't want to give the im­pres­sion that I'm a sup­port­er of a group and that was why I blocked the Prime Min­is­ter. "It had noth­ing to do with any par­ty...So I don't want to give the im­pres­sion that this house­hold is at­tached to any par­ty," he said.

Yes­ter­day, COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an said his par­ty had in­formed the UNC that COP deputy leader Wendy Lee Yuen would at­tend Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ral­ly on COP's be­half. Dook­er­an leaves T&T to­mor­row for a two-week lec­ture tour of five uni­ver­si­ties in In­dia. He said he was al­so meet­ing UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar at 3 pm to­day to dis­cuss the is­sues af­fect­ing T&T and oth­er mat­ters. UNC of­fi­cials said talks may in­clude UNC/COP uni­ty talks. UNC MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the UNC had in­vit­ed to the ral­ly, more than 500 non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, trade unions and busi­ness sec­tor groups, as well as po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Gopeesingh said there has been a good re­sponse. An es­ti­mat­ed 15,000 to 20,000 peo­ple were ex­pect­ed, he added. A cross-sec­tion of union lead­ers have agreed to at­tend, Gopeesingh con­firmed. "Each or­gan­i­sa­tion will be bring­ing their peo­ple and we have mo­bilised UNC sup­port­ers and cit­i­zens from through­out T&T to at­tend," he said. "We've gone around con­stituen­cies call­ing on the pub­lic as well as UNC's 45,000 mem­bers to at­tend and we're mak­ing trans­port arrange­ments to as­sist those who want to come to the ral­ly." Oth­er UNC of­fi­cials said those ex­pect­ed to speak in­clud­ed Fi­tun's David Ab­du­lah, OW­TU pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, NAR leader Car­son Charles, DPTT leader Steve Al­varez and ac­tivist Stephen Cadiz.

Yes­ter­day, Cadiz said: "I'll be speak­ing. I at­tend­ed all the events sup­port­ive of civic so­ci­ety. We're very in­ter­est­ed in see­ing where the pol­i­tics is go­ing so we're sup­port­ive of pos­i­tive changes in the sys­tem where­by civic so­ci­ety can play a big­ger role." But DNA leader Kirk Meighoo said he would not be at­tend­ing. Meighoo was one of the first per­sons who joined with Per­sad-Bisses­sar when the UNC be­gan ex­plor­ing uni­ty in 2007. Meighoo said: "We don't sup­port some of the peo­ple as­so­ci­at­ed with the plat­form on Sat­ur­day. Our pol­i­tics stands for jus­tice for the peo­ple and we can­not com­pro­mise with those who con­tin­ue to op­press the peo­ple. We stand for what is right." UNC of­fi­cials said T&T Cham­ber pres­i­dent An­gela Per­sad de­clined to at­tend be­cause of a pre­vi­ous en­gage­ment. Per­sad-Bisses­sar meets with the var­i­ous con­firmed speak­ers at a lun­cheon at Kapok to­day. UNC vice-chair­man Fuad Khan said: "We're com­ing to­geth­er to en­sure T&T moves ahead."