Yvonne Webb

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning last night fin­gered for­mer UNC min­is­ter Bri­an Keui Tung as the per­son who sold out the date of the 1995 elec­tion to for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day.

Speak­ing on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form on Har­ris Prom­e­nade, San Fer­nan­do, last night, Man­ning said he would re­veal the PNM per­son who sold out in due course. Man­ning de­scribed as a bad mis­take when he and six PNM mem­bers met in San Fer­nan­do and de­cid­ed to call an elec­tion and set a date. He said they de­cid­ed to use the el­e­ment of sur­prise and keep it a se­cret from the Op­po­si­tion. "Un­known to us, and I would say it tonight, one of those six per­sons who was present, with­in days, went to a gen­tle­man called Bri­an Keui Tung and told him the plan. "By that time he was with Mr Pan­day and we did not know," Man­ning said, point­ing out that the rest is his­to­ry as PNM lost the elec­tion.

"That is a mis­take I made then and I will nev­er make again," he said. Man­ning said this year he caught the Op­po­si­tion with their po­lit­i­cal pants down by their knees, "and now you will see who is man and who is man­i­cou man." Ad­dress­ing a gath­er­ing which filled Har­ris Prom­e­nade as the par­ty pre­sent­ed 41 can­di­dates to con­test the May 24 elec­tion, Man­ning trained his guns on UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing she is not ready to be Prime Min­is­ter. He said she lacked the po­lit­i­cal skill, ex­pe­ri­ence, train­ing and acu­men to do so. "It will be a dis­as­ter if God for­bids and she be­comes the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go," he added.

He ac­cused her of mak­ing mis­take af­ter mis­take, nam­ing them as Er­rol Mc Leod and Makan­dal Daa­ga, two of the coali­tion part­ners. While stat­ing he did not want to get in­to their busi­ness, Man­ning said one of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's biggest mis­take was to side­line Mick­ela Pan­day, daugh­ter of the par­ty's founder Bas­deo Pan­day. He said she should have put Mick­ela to re­place her fa­ther in the Cou­va North seat. Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who was pre­sent­ed as the can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin West, re­ceived a rous­ing wel­come from the crowd. Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, can­di­date for Pointe-a-Pierre, said three weeks be­fore the elec­tion, the Op­po­si­tion was "in a coali­tion bus strain­ing to go up a hill." She said the stakes in the elec­tion were too high to wor­ry with the "coali­tion farce."