Yvonne Webb

As the bat­tle for gen­er­al elec­tion heats up, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is warn­ing that at­tempts will be made to pad votes in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies to give the PNM an un­fair ad­van­tage.

"Dur­ing the course of the next few weeks, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) will be dis­trib­ut­ing thou­sands of keys to so-called new home-own­ers, many of whom are in mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies," she charged as she launched the par­ty's cam­paign in Mara­bel­la on Mon­day night. She said that would have the ef­fect of trans­fer­ring PN­Mites from one area in­to a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy so that the PNM would in­crease the num­ber of peo­ple who vot­ed for their par­ty in those close­ly-con­test­ed seats." She urged UNC sup­port­ers to over­whelm the PNM's at­tempts to ma­nip­u­late the vote by cast­ing their bal­lots against Man­ning.

"For every one house-padding they get we must bring out ten an­ti-Man­ning votes," she said. If elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised to es­tab­lish a Min­istry of the Peo­ple where groups of con­cerned cit­i­zens could take their griev­ances and be heard, rather than re­sort to burn­ing tyres and block­ing road­sides to have their con­cerns heard. She al­so promised that un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment Gate will not be re­moved, nei­ther CEPEP or any so­cial pro­grammes that as­sist­ed peo­ple. Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the HDC Jear­lean John told a ra­dio sta­tion yes­ter­day the HDC was con­tin­u­ing to give out hous­es since there was a large de­mand. She de­nied there was any vot­er-padding tak­ing place.