Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al hope­ful Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called on cit­i­zens to "grab the mo­ment and take back Trinidad and To­ba­go" from Patrick Man­ning. "This time is too im­por­tant. There can be no wak­ing up on the morn­ing of May 25 with re­gret that each of us did not do what we should have done," Per­sad-Bisses­sar im­plored. "You did not wait for me, I wait­ed for you. This is not my time, it is your time." She made an ap­peal for sup­port­ers to vote out the PNM. "Do you want five more years of the last five years?...Do you want five more years of be­ing ig­nored? No?...then give me your hand and join me." She point­ed out that on Jan­u­ary 24 she be­came UNC po­lit­i­cal leader, on Feb­ru­ary 24 she be­came Op­po­si­tion Leader and on May 24, the date of the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion, she would lib­er­ate the peo­ple from Man­ning and free them from his rule.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­rived around 8.50 pm on Fri­day af­ter at­tend­ing a func­tion at the In­di­an Women's As­so­ci­a­tion. Her en­trance was her­ald­ed with Cana­di­an singer, Ce­line Dion's A new day has come. The thou­sands gath­ered at the event erupt­ed in cheers and ap­plause with hun­dreds wav­ing lit­tle yel­low UNC flags. She was speak­ing at a UNC pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ing en­ti­tled, "Let's take charge now," which was held at the Emer­ald Plaza car park in St Au­gus­tine on Fri­day night, hours af­ter Man­ning an­nounced the May 24 elec­tion date. At­tor­ney Garvin Nicholas and Khadi­jah Ameen chaired the meet­ing. Ameen was one of the prospec­tive UNC can­di­dates for the St Au­gus­tine seat.

ABOVE: ?The crowd lis­tens at­ten­tive­ly dur­ing the UNC po­lit­i­cal meet­ing held at Emer­ald Plaza, St Au­gus­tine, on Fri­day.