Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

UNC po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says that the cam­paign strate­gist who was de­port­ed when he ar­rived in Trinidad on Thurs­day night will not be re­turn­ing. Speak­ing at the Cu­mu­to recre­ation ground in Bar­rack­pore last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Bernard Camp­bell–the for­mer cam­paign strate­gist of Barack Oba­ma–now fears for his life af­ter what has hap­pened. She said he was de­port­ed by the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and this showed that the PNM "are des­per­ate be­cause they know we will win."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar says when she be­comes prime min­is­ter af­ter elec­tion, she will for­mal­ly apol­o­gise to the US and Camp­bell. (See: Page A7) Ear­li­er, the UNC sup­port­ers crowd­ed in­to the dark Cu­mu­to recre­ation ground last night, as the Op­po­si­tion seeks to take the Princes Town South/Table­land seat from the the PNM. How­ev­er, the lights of the recre­ation ground which il­lu­mi­nat­ed the field for the past two months re­mained off, leav­ing thou­sands to stand in the dark­ness. The screens and stage lights pro­vid­ed some light at the front and gen­er­a­tor lights were used to pro­vide il­lu­mi­na­tion on the out­er fields.

The dark­ness brought pi­cong from UNC Princes Town South/Table­land can­di­date Clifton de Couteau and Anil Roberts, who said PNM "bad-mind­ed­ness" had left the peo­ple in dark­ness. "The bad-mind­ed­ness of PNM is clear­ly man­i­fest­ed tonight...On this ground, the lights have been con­nect­ed past two months, but they refuse to il­lu­mi­nate this ground tonight," De Couteau said. "It stayed in dark­ness, but af­ter May 24, we will en­sure that you have lights."

He then promised to im­prove the agri­cul­ture and fish­ing in­dus­tries in the con­stituen­cy. He said for years the PNM held Moru­ga res­i­dents in bondage. "For the past 35 years, every gen­er­al elec­tion, the car­ing Gov­ern­ment promis­es a fish­ing port...But I want to tell you that I will rec­om­mend that se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to con­struct that fish­ing port for the peo­ple of Moru­ga when the UNC gets in­to of­fice," de Couteau said. He said sys­tems would be put in place to rear fresh-wa­ter fish.