Gail Alexan­der

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 hours ahead of yes­ter­day's gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults, out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning was con­fi­dent­ly pro­ject­ing that the rul­ing PNM would win more than 21 of the 41 elec­toral seats. Man­ning de­liv­ered his fore­cast to re­porters about 9.30 am yes­ter­day, af­ter he and his wife Hazel cast their bal­lot at Bel­mont Sec­ondary School. Al­so vot­ing at the same venue was PNM Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West can­di­date Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh. Man­ning and his wife ar­rived around 9.15 am, ac­com­pa­nied by a heavy se­cu­ri­ty de­tail.

Ar­riv­ing im­me­di­ate­ly ahead of him was NNV can­di­date, Fuad Abu Bakr, son of Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr. Man­ning, his wife and McIn­tosh were greet­ed by Port-of-Spain May­or Murchi­son Brown, who ex­changed kiss­es with Mrs Man­ning and Mrs McIn­tosh. Shelv­ing his usu­al suit for a loose big shirt of mut­ed white and blue-grey tones, Man­ning came out of the polling sta­tion to speak to the crowd of re­porters, among whom were re­gion­al cor­re­spon­dents. Man­ning quipped: "I told you all al­ready; I'm not go­ing any­where... Look me here." Asked how he was feel­ing, Man­ning im­me­di­ate­ly replied: Ex­cel­lent...!" As for who was ex­pect­ed to win, Man­ning replied: "PNM, of course... ab­solute­ly, ab­solute­ly, ab­solute­ly. We're win­ning more than 21 seats–we're go­ing to win.

In fact, we are like­ly to win quite hand­some­ly, ac­tu­al­ly. We're ab­solute­ly cer­tain. "This is my eleventh gen­er­al elec­tion... We will get more than 21 seats–that's all I need to say." Asked about a pos­si­ble loss, Man­ning said: "If you lose, so be it. When you go in­to a con­test, you can ei­ther be a win­ner or los­er. If we lose. it's the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process. But that's un­like­ly."

Man­ning said he did not have con­cerns. On de­trac­tors' views that he may have tak­en a dan­ger­ous risk by call­ing the elec­tion ear­ly, as he had done in 1995, Man­ning said: "That's their view, I have an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent view. Oth­ers have not prop­er­ly analysed the 1995 re­sponse... We've con­duct­ed an ex­cel­lent elec­tion cam­paign and we're con­fi­dent. "The fact that you did not ex­pect the elec­tion does not mean it was pre­ma­ture. In fact, we con­sid­er it was very time­ly–very time­ly." Man­ning laughed off the per­cep­tion that he was un­der pres­sure. He added: "I am ex­pe­ri­enced; I know how to pace my­self in an elec­tion cam­paign. It's one day at a time." He de­clined to dis­cuss the mar­gin­al seats, say­ing he had his own views. He al­so said he was very con­fi­dent about To­ba­go.

Asked about his per­ceived un­pop­u­lar­i­ty, Man­ning said: "Which peo­ple say­ing I un­pop­u­lar? That's not what we're pick­ing up in the cam­paign." He al­so dis­missed the Nac­ta poll. Not­ing the for­eign re­gion­al me­dia, Man­ning re­marked: "Plen­ty Ba­jan press here, boy...! Man­ning said he had re­ceived a lot of calls from Caribbean col­leagues. He said he did not buy in­to the per­cep­tion that what might be hap­pen­ing in oth­er re­gion­al states might al­so af­fect T&T. Man­ning point­ed out that in the cur­rent elec­tion, the PNM had utilised a changed ap­proach. Af­ter vot­ing in Bel­mont, Man­ning went to his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy of­fice and oth­er PNM of­fices in the south be­fore re­turn­ing to Port-of-Spain to pre­pare for last night's re­sults.