Kim­ber­ly Mack­han & Nadaleen Singh

Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment po­lit­i­cal leader Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning in­tends to make queries in­to de­ci­sions from act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert to re­ject an ap­pli­ca­tion from the PNM to march in Port-of-Spain to­mor­row. "It is not some­thing that I am re­al­ly en­am­oured at...We are go­ing to have some dis­cus­sions with the Com­mi­sion­er of Po­lice on this mat­ter be­ca­sue we would like to know the cir­cum­stances un­der which the PNM would be al­lowed to march in this coun­try," Man­ning said around 9.30 pm yes­ter­day at Balis­er House.

"Every­body else seems to be al­lowed to march." When asked about his prepa­ra­tions for to­mor­row's no-con­fi­dence mo­tion to be brought against him in Par­lia­ment by the Op­po­si­tion, Man­ning said: "We are pre­pared for all even­tu­al­i­ties." Man­ning dis­missed sug­ges­tions from Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that he was bluff­ing about call­ing a gen­er­al elec­tion soon. "There are none so blind as those who can­not see," he said. He added that the screen­ing process would re­sume at 5 pm with ten more cos­ntiuen­cies un­der­go­ing the process.

A state­ment from Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day said: "The PNM's ro­bust mo­bil­i­sa­tion is tes­ti­mo­ny to its re-or­gan­ised, mod­i­fied and re­struc­tured ap­proach to po­lit­i­cal ac­tion," Bal­isi­er House said in a state­ment. The par­ty was re­act­ing to Philbert's de­ci­sion, based on con­cerns over "the in­flux of in­creased ve­hic­u­lar and pedes­tri­an traf­fic as a con­se­quence of the sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­dance at the pro­posed event."

The PNM said it had planned to mo­bilise "at least 20,000" peo­ple for "a peace­ful march through the streets of Port-of-Spain to cul­mi­nate in a ral­ly at Wood­ford Square." The event was aimed as a show of sup­port for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who is fac­ing a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row.

Ear­li­er in the day, par­ty chair­man Con­rad Enill said the march was de­nied on the ba­sis that Philbert "was not able to pro­vide re­sources to guar­an­tee law and or­der." Enill stressed that the PNM would obey the or­der. Man­ning re­cent­ly an­nounced that the par­ty would ap­ply for po­lice per­mis­sion for the march and Wood­ford Square ral­ly. Philbert has al­so turned down an ap­pli­ca­tion from the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions for a pub­lic march to­mor­row.