Shal­iza Has­sanali

New Na­tion­al Vi­sion (NNV) po­lit­i­cal leader Fuad Abu Bakr is ac­cus­ing the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of try­ing to desta­bilise the coun­try as the elec­tion cam­paign winds down. On Fri­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said the po­lice re­cov­ered an AK-47 as­sault ri­fle, two mag­a­zines con­tain­ing 48 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion and sev­er­al jer­seys bear­ing the lo­go of the NNV par­ty at a house in Care­nage. The NNV is con­test­ing 12 seats in the May 24 elec­tion. Philbert ad­mit­ted the peo­ple ar­rest­ed were be­lieved to be in­volved in a plot to dis­rupt next week Mon­day's elec­tion.

Yes­ter­day, in re­sponse to the re­port, Bakr, son of 1990 at­tempt­ed coup leader Yasin Abu Bakr, said he was dis­heart­ened by Philbert's re­marks since the Gov­ern­ment was on­ly cre­at­ing un­nec­es­sary fear and pan­ic among cit­i­zens with the dis­cov­ery of the jer­seys. Bakr said he would not be sur­prised if Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning us­es this so-called plot to de­clare a state of emer­gency at the eleventh hour to de­lay the gen­er­al elec­tion be­cause they know they are los­ing sup­port base. "They are the ones try­ing to desta­bilise the coun­try, not us. They are play­ing dirty pol­i­tics. They should not stoop to that lev­el."

Bakr said hav­ing dis­trib­uted 10,000 jer­seys in the last few weeks "any­one could have got­ten their hands on it. They just want to as­so­ciate a po­lit­i­cal par­ty with some arms and am­mu­ni­tion." "It's dis­heart­en­ing that a po­lice com­mis­sion­er could make those kinds of al­le­ga­tions based on no ev­i­dence. Every­where in the coun­try there is elec­tion fever." "It is ridicu­lous," said Bakr, who called on Philbert to re­sign with im­me­di­ate ef­fect. Stat­ing that the NNV's sup­port was build­ing mo­men­tum, Bakr said peo­ple were thirst­ing for change be­cause of the PNM's fail­ure at good gov­er­nance.

LIVE IN­TER­VIEW WITH KAM­LA Per­sad Bisses­sar! Sun­day, 16th @ 9pm... on

CNC3... Does she have what it takes to lead? Can she be the next PM?

This in­ter­view will be streamed LIVE on http://www.guardian.co.tt/2010elec­tion