Yvonne Webb

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Prime Min­is­ter is a cow­ard. She said his de­ci­sion to dis­solve the Par­lia­ment two years ahead of its time was an ad­mis­sion of the colos­sal fail­ure of his PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and chal­lenged him to name the date of the elec­tion. She said the man­ner in which it was done was a dis­re­spect, not on­ly to the Par­lia­ment, but to cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Man­ning could have gone to the Sen­ate, which was sit­ting at the time the an­nounce­ment was made, or wait­ed un­til to­day to come to the Par­lia­ment and make the an­nounce­ment, but he choose the easy way out be­cause of fear. At a news con­fer­ence at the Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va, last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Man­ning was afraid of the rev­e­la­tions that would have been made in the Par­lia­ment to­day when the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against him was sched­uled to be de­bat­ed. "He took the cow­ard's way out. He was afraid to face the Op­po­si­tion mem­bers. He was afraid to face his own mem­bers be­cause he could not guar­an­tee they would vote for him," she said.