Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Fear of a re­peat of a 1995 Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) de­feat was spurned yes­ter­day, when Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning sig­nalled vic­to­ry to be his, come Mon­day. Ad­mit­ting that when he placed T&T in gen­er­al elec­tion mode his im­age as prime min­is­ter was not a favourable one, Man­ning said the mam­moth crowd gath­ered on the Ed­die Hart Ground, Tacarigua, demon­strat­ed the con­fi­dence cit­i­zens of T&T had in him. Vis­i­bly moved by par­ty faith­ful who trans­formed the park in­to a sea of red, Man­ning said: "Nev­er be­fore have I seen a gath­er­ing of po­lit­i­cal peo­ple like this on Ed­die Hart Grounds. I just can­not be­lieve what I am see­ing be­fore me. "What this says is that the PNM is poised for its great­est vic­to­ry in its 54-year his­to­ry."

He re­called that at the PNM Spe­cial Con­ven­tion at Ch­aguara­mas, in March, when he di­rect­ed the nom­i­na­tion of can­di­dates to be­gin, many op­posed his de­ci­sion. "Eight weeks ago, at that time, the im­age of the po­lit­i­cal leader was the low­est it has ever been. Many peo­ple thought I had done the wrong thing. "While I do not want to talk too ear­ly, when I look at this au­di­ence I have no doubt that not on­ly have we done the right thing, but we have suc­ceed­ed in mo­bil­is­ing in a way that no po­lit­i­cal par­ty ever mo­bilised in this coun­try. "We are go­ing to beat them in the East, West, North and South. We are go­ing to beat them in Cen­tral and in To­ba­go. We are go­ing to beat them. We are go­ing to beat them," a con­fi­dent Man­ning shout­ed, send­ing sup­port­ers in a fren­zy with his trade­mark state­ments.

Warn­ing sup­port­ers that elect­ing the UNC coali­tion was a dan­ger, Man­ning said the op­po­nents were yet to an­nounce what poli­cies they in­tend­ed to pur­sue. "The leader of that par­ty is sur­round­ed by some strange and strange­ly-ori­ent­ed men, whose ob­jec­tive is any­thing oth­er than to im­prove the qual­i­ty of lives of cit­i­zens of T&T. "We know that if they should get in­to of­fice Per­sad-Bisses­sar is go­ing to be a tool in the hands of those gen­tle­men. How­ev­er in­tel­li­gent she might be, the losers are go­ing to be you." While aim­ing his po­lit­i­cal guns at some mem­bers of the UNC coali­tion, Man­ning ad­mit­ted that he had se­ri­ous con­cerns about the par­ty's chair­man, Jack Warn­er.

"The one I fear the most. I am a man of very sound heart. I do not get scared very eas­i­ly; but I am dead scared if Austin Jack Warn­er ends up as the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance. "They talk about cor­rup­tion. That is what we will have to call a klep­toc­ra­cy." En­cour­ag­ing sup­port­ers to ac­cept all the gifts hand­ed out by the UNC coali­tion to woo votes, Man­ning said: "If they shar­ing mon­ey, take it. Black­ber­ry cell­phones; make sure and line up for some of that, then go to the polling sta­tion and vote for the PNM and vic­to­ry will be ours."