Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

To­co/San­gre Grande MP In­dra Sinanan Ojah-Ma­haraj re­ceived sus­tained heck­les and boos in the pres­ence of Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, at the PNM's last pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Va­len­cia Junc­tion on Mon­day night.

Ojah-Ma­haraj's pre­sen­ta­tion at the PNM's "Meet the Con­stituents" se­ries en­ti­tled: "Ex­plain­ing poli­cies, pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties," faced fre­quent pub­lic out­bursts from peo­ple gath­ered at the event. She suf­fered re­peat­ed jeers and in­ter­rup­tions from mem­bers of the crowd at­tend­ing the func­tion, which was held in her con­stituen­cy. Ojah-Ma­haraj en­dured the taunts and con­temp­tu­ous shouts in the pres­ence of the for­mer MP for the area, Roger Boynes, his broth­er, Ronald, who is the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man, and PNM cen­tral ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber, Er­ic Tay­lor, al­so known in the ca­lyp­so world, as Pink Pan­ther.

Mean­while, Man­ning has used the PNM's high turnout at a re­cent po­lit­i­cal gath­er­ing to raise his chances for suc­cess against Op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ties in an elec­tion. Man­ning boast­ed that his po­lit­i­cal meet­ing over the week­end ap­peared to draw a crowd that was more than three times the size of the one that Op­po­si­tion forces were able to gen­er­ate at their po­lit­i­cal meet­ing, which was held at the same time. He said the high at­ten­dance at the PNM spe­cial con­ven­tion in Ch­aguara­mas re­flect­ed that the PNM was able to com­mand more in­di­vid­ual sup­port com­pared to the Op­po­si­tion groups, which held a joint po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas on the same date. "The proof of the pud­ding lies in eat­ing (it)...and when the po­lit­i­cal par­ties called up­on in­di­vid­ual sup­port, we saw what we saw on Sat­ur­day," Man­ning said.

He in­di­cat­ed that the po­lice es­ti­mat­ed that at least 17,000 peo­ple at­tend­ed the PNM spe­cial con­ven­tion on Sat­ur­day. He al­so claimed that the num­ber of peo­ple gath­ered at the Op­po­si­tion meet­ing in Saith Park on Sat­ur­day stood at no more than 5,000 at its peak pe­ri­od. Man­ning said the PNM "went out of its way to en­sure that" it ver­i­fied the at­ten­dance fig­ure for the Op­po­si­tion's ral­ly. "We count­ed it and at peak, my dear friends, and I am be­ing very gen­er­ous, at peak, the at­ten­dance was 4,000 peo­ple (at the Op­po­si­tion's po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sat­ur­day)," he said. He stressed that PNM set mo­bil­i­sa­tion tar­gets from its 41 con­stituen­cy-ex­ec­u­tives for the PNM's spe­cial con­ven­tion.

He re­port­ed that his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive mo­bilised more than 950 peo­ple at the event. He al­so said that San Fer­nan­do West ex­ec­u­tive was able to mo­bile about 900 peo­ple for the same event.