Pe­ter Bal­roop

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was in an ex­ul­tant mood yes­ter­day at the 20,000-plus Voice of the Peo­ple ral­ly in Saith Park, Ch­agua­nas, as she bait­ed Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to bring the next gen­er­al elec­tion. She told the enor­mous crowd that spilled out of the park as she wound up the ral­ly, that she was told Man­ning had threat­ened to call a snap elec­tion dur­ing the PNM con­ven­tion held si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly yes­ter­day in Ch­aguara­mas. Her in­for­ma­tion was that there were on­ly about 2,000 PN­Mites in at­ten­dance, and for her to have so many sup­port­ers at Saith Park out­side an elec­tion cam­paign spelled vol­umes for the uni­ty thrust. That spurred the UNC MP for Siparia to call on Man­ning to car­ry out his threat and an­nounce a date. "Man­ning say­ing if Siparia want elec­tion he will give Siparia elec­tion...Don't back back on that promise, Mr Man­ning; don't back back at all," the UNC po­lit­i­cal leader urged.

When­ev­er Man­ning deigned to pull the date out of his back pock­et, the unit­ed Op­po­si­tion would be there in their thou­sands to re­spond to the chal­lenge, she de­clared. She swore Man­ning him­self was aware he could not stop the unit­ed Op­po­si­tion from beat­ing the PNM at the polls. Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed that Man­ning had said he would be­gin screen­ing elec­tion can­di­dates on the eve of the April 9 de­bate on the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion she had brought against his gov­ern­ment in the Low­er House. Say­ing he could screen whom he wants, Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked the crowd if they had con­fi­dence in Man­ning. She asked the ques­tion twice and the sec­ond "No" was twice as loud as the first. Ear­li­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­ferred to the mys­te­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart be­fore he left T&T ear­li­er this month, and said he could be in le­gal trou­ble if it was found, even­tu­al­ly, that Hart was guilty of a crim­i­nal of­fence and the PM had giv­en him ad­vance warn­ing of that fact.

"The sto­ry buss now that they can't find Mr Man­ning's Hart. That is why Mr Man­ning is Hart­less...he Hart gone," Per­sad-Bisses­sar joked. Look­ing at the wide rep­re­sen­ta­tion of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, labour and NGOs on the plat­form, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was rare in a na­tion's his­to­ry for peo­ple to put aside their dif­fer­ences in terms of race, class, gen­der, po­lit­i­cal be­liefs and join hands for the com­mon good of the pro­gres­sion of their coun­try. The rea­son: "A Car­ni­val of cor­rup­tion and ex­ces­sive­ness is parad­ing through our blood­ied streets, show­ing off its self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of a leader's ego. "But un­der­stand this...His pow­er is de­rived through you. "Vox Pop­uli, Vox Dei. The voice of the peo­ple is the voice of God. The peo­ple will de­ter­mine what be­comes of him. "Each day he grows weak­er be­fore an in­creas­ing­ly ag­i­tat­ed and an­gry pop­u­la­tion."

"He must know his po­lit­i­cal days are num­bered. "Sure­ly, he does not need his prophet­ess to see the end is in sight. Peo­ple are fed up."

The so­lu­tion was to rise above par­ty iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "It does not mat­ter if you are UNC, COP or PNM. You don't have to be a mem­ber of a par­ty or a union. Each of us is a cit­i­zen of a na­tion in cri­sis. And no one is less im­por­tant. "Like drops of wa­ter in the mighty ocean, we will to­geth­er be a force that no one could stop."