Richard Lord

Will Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning call the date for the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion when he ad­dress­es tonight's pub­lic meet­ing of the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at Hi-Lo car park in St Au­gus­tine? That's the ques­tion thou­sands of cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing those at­tend­ing the PNM meet­ing and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' (UNC) pub­lic meet­ing at Hi-Lo car park in Mara­bel­la, would like an­swered. Some sources said Man­ning would an­nounce the elec­tion date in a ma­jor ad­dress. Last Thurs­day, on the ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards dis­solved the Ninth Par­lia­ment at mid­night, clear­ing the way for the hold­ing of a gen­er­al elec­tion with­in 90 days. In pre­vi­ous years, Man­ning had an­nounced the elec­tion date in Par­lia­ment, but sources said he would have to break with tra­di­tion this year.

Oth­er sources said, how­ev­er, that it was un­like­ly that Man­ning would re­veal the elec­tion date at tonight's meet­ing as prepa­ra­tions for the polls had not yet been com­plet­ed. Al­so list­ed to speak at the PNM meet­ing tonight are Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning, Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter and Pointe-a-Pierre MP Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter and St Joseph MP Kennedy Swarats­ingh. Ralph Maraj, a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter un­der both Man­ning and Bas­deo Pan­day, is ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the PNM plat­form tonight. Maraj re­signed from the PNM in 1995, dur­ing the rift be­tween PM Man­ning and his (Maraj's) sis­ter, then Speak­er Oc­c­ah Sea­paul, whom Man­ning had put un­der house ar­rest.

Man­ning claimed Sea­paul was mov­ing to bring down the then Gov­ern­ment, af­ter the sus­pen­sion of Ken Val­ley from the House. Maraj went to the UNC and be­came a min­is­ter. In 2001, he, along with then UNC min­is­ters, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Trevor Su­dama, ex­pressed a lack of sup­port for then PM Pan­day, caus­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to col­lapse. Maraj is ex­pect­ed to chair tonight's meet­ing. Mean­while, Man­ning is ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a spe­cial wel­come when he ar­rives for tonight's pub­lic meet­ing as he is to be es­cort­ed to the plat­form by a del­e­ga­tion of fe­male PNM mem­bers. He is ex­pect­ed to speak of the many achieve­ments of his par­ty over the past 29 months his Gov­ern­ment last­ed.

And at the UNC meet­ing in Mara­bel­la, new po­lit­i­cal leader and Siparia MP, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is ex­pect­ed to re­veal cer­tain in­for­ma­tion about the Prime Min­is­ter. The in­for­ma­tion was sup­posed to have been re­vealed in Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, dur­ing a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in the Prime Min­is­ter. That de­bate was pre-empt­ed, as Par­lia­ment was dis­solved hours ear­li­er. Oth­er speak­ers at the UNC meet­ing in­clude chair­man Jack Warn­er, deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers Roodal Moo­nial and Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit, Ver­na St Rose-Greaves, Ja­son Williams, William Archie and Thel­ston Ja­goo. The UNC has sched­uled pub­lic meet­ings at the Rio Claro band­stand on Wednes­day, and Emer­ald Plaza in St Au­gus­tine on Fri­day.