Yvonne Webb

"Kam­la­ma­nia"spread through­out Pointe-a-Pierre con­stituen­cy last night as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) launched its cam­paign at the Gopaul Lands car park, Mara­bel­la.

UNC sup­port­ers reached out to touch the hands of the woman they are sup­port­ing to be­come the next Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go as she walked to­wards the stage to the beat of tas­sa. It was a launch of a dif­fer­ence as Sen­a­tor Ver­na St Rose brought "down the pow­er" as she danced her way on stage to the beat of the song by the same name, sung by El­la An­dall. St Rose sprin­kled wa­ter on the stage to sig­ni­fy a bap­tism of fire for the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), which was launch­ing its cam­paign si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly at St Au­gus­tine.

Her pas­sion and spir­it spurred on Sen­a­tor Lyn­dria Ou­dit who fol­lowed by singing a hymn she learned while at­tend­ing a Catholic in­sti­tu­tion. Jack Warn­er, the par­ty's chair­man, in­tro­duced ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy who sang a spe­cial­ly-com­posed song, "Patrick Man­ning Has To Go", to the tune of PNM's an­them in the last elec­tion "Patrick We Step­ping Oout With You". Crazy al­so in­tro­duced the "Per­reira Dance", with hands placed across the face in an X, made fa­mous by the San Juan con­stituent who made the mo­tion when he told Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning on his walk­a­bout he was not wel­come. He was fol­lowed by Nigel from Or­ange Sky who moved the au­di­ence with a reg­gae-style com­po­si­tion, "Wind Of Change Is Blow­ing."

Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Rudy Mooni­lal said as he stood in the heart of the in­dus­tri­al cap­i­tal and saw the flares em­a­nat­ing from the near­by Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery it re­mind­ed him of the wealth and pros­per­i­ty of the na­tion that was an­gered by des­ti­tu­tion, pover­ty and crime which had en­gulfed the coun­try as a re­sult of one man. Join­ing the UNC on the plat­form was To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) leader Ash­worth Jack, who will be con­test­ing a seat in To­ba­go at the next elec­tion through an al­liance with the UNC.