Fran­cis Joseph

?If a dis­as­ter or sheer chaos had bro­ken out in Mara­bel­la on Mon­day night, the po­lice would not have been able to han­dle it.

Plain talk, bad man­ners! The Mara­bel­la po­lice mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the crowd which was go­ing to at­tend the launch of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) cam­paign at Gopaul Lands, Mara­bel­la, in the con­stituen­cy of Pointe-a-Pierre. At 6 pm, there were few­er than 100 peo­ple at the venue, and most of them were me­dia per­son­nel, as CNC3 was prepar­ing to go live from their new mo­bile unit. One hour lat­er, as Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan was prepar­ing to get the night's pro­ceed­ings un­der way, the car park at Gopaul Lands Shop­ping Com­plex was filled. By 8 pm, the crowd had grown so much that the po­lice, head­ed by ASP Ce­cil San­tana, closed off the road lead­ing to Gopaul Lands. There was no room in­side the car park, and the road­way and ad­join­ing lot of land were filled with sup­port­ers and cu­ri­ous spec­ta­tors. There was just a hand­ful of po­lice of­fi­cers present, along with two armed sol­diers. One of the po­lice­men, when ques­tioned, said they had mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the im­pact of the UNC cam­paign launch. Had they known, they would have called for re­in­force­ments in the event that an emer­gency oc­curred. The crowd was so thick that when UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­rived, she had to be es­cort­ed from the Mara­bel­la round­about to the large podi­um.

As the po­lice­man put it, luck­i­ly there were no in­ci­dents. But it was clear that the large crowd came to hear what Per­sad-Bisses­sar had to of­fer. Roodal Mooni­lal was his usu­al fiery self, deal­ing with the is­sues, and ask­ing the coun­try if they want to put Patrick Man­ning back as Prime Min­is­ter. The sur­prise speak­er was Ash­worth Jack, po­lit­i­cal leader of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), who spoke of the need for To­ba­go to join with the UNC. Jack Warn­er, UNC chair­man, tried to stay away from bac­cha­nal. But he just could not re­sist, and then with­out warn­ing, dropped ca­lyp­son­ian Crazy on the crowd. Crazy said it was Warn­er who wrote the lyrics and he was just singing, "Patrick Man­ning have to go."

To­geth­er with the Pre­mala Dance Acad­e­my per­form­ers, Crazy thrilled the large crowd, en­tic­ing Gyp­sy, the UNC can­di­date for Ma­yaro, to join him in song. There was even the dance, im­i­tat­ing the block­age sign from San Juan pen­sion­er, Per­cy Vil­lafana, when Man­ning, dur­ing a walk­a­bout, tried to en­ter his yard last month. The crowd loved it, with Warn­er promis­ing to hand out 100,000 copies of the CD. Then the mo­ment came when Per­sad-Bisses­sar took to the podi­um. A woman in the crowd said: "Look how nice she look­ing, like she get a make over in Mi­a­mi." Per­sad-Bisses­sar was not the fire­brand she had been be­fore be­com­ing UNC po­lit­i­cal leader. She threw no re­al punch­es, but as her col­leagues would say: "It is ear­ly days yet.