Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dis­ap­point­ed thou­sands of PNM sup­port­ers who at­tend­ed last night's pub­lic po­lit­i­cal in St Au­gus­tine. when he did not an­nounce the gen­er­al elec­tion date.

The large crowd came in ea­ger an­tic­i­pa­tion of hear­ing the elec­tion date, but Man­ning used his ad­dress to cau­tion and ad­vise mem­bers that the PNM should be re­turned to pow­er, and, ap­par­ent­ly, kept the date in his back pock­et. Mo­ments af­ter for­mer PNM MP Ralph Maraj an­nounced Man­ning's ar­rival at 7.36 pm, the crowd erupt­ed, wav­ing bal­isiers and flags and oth­er ob­jects to the sound of the pop­u­lar song, "It Is a Love Thing," by the band Whis­pers. The large crowd, in­clud­ing sev­er­al gov­ern­ment min­is­ters on stage, such as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira and Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne, danced as Man­ning made his en­trance to the venue. Man­ning was ac­com­pa­nied by his wife Hazel, En­er­gy Min­is­ter and PNM chair­man Con­rad Enill and PNM PRO Jer­ry Narace.

Pointe-a-Pierre MP Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo was among the PNM's bat­tery of speak­ers.She cau­tioned vot­ers against the pro­posed uni­ty among the Op­po­si­tion forces. She de­scribed the Op­po­si­tion par­ty as a ca­dav­er and an­oth­er as a snake. She added that T&T should pre­pare for a uni­ty fu­ner­al af­ter the uni­ty wed­ding of the Op­po­si­tion forces. In his 40-minute pre­sen­ta­tion, Man­ning opt­ed to re­hash and re­peat state­ments from his past pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ings, rather than an­nounce the gen­er­al elec­tion date.

He was repet­i­tive about the crowd size at the PNM's re­cent spe­cial elec­tion, the gov­ern­ment's hous­ing project, the trans­porta­tion costs for us­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion such as the wa­ter taxi and the bus­es. Man­ning has up to Ju­ly 9 to hold an elec­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but he has to call the date with­in 35 days from April 8.