Geisha Kow­lessar

As the PNM's band­wag­on rolled in­to Ari­ma last night Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning went on a fiery tirade, again ac­cus­ing the me­dia of be­ing against him and his po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Dressed in his sig­na­ture red shirt, em­bla­zoned with a large yel­low bal­isi­er, Man­ning, with in­dex fin­ger point­ed in the air, in­struct­ed the gath­er­ing "not to de­pend on the news­pa­pers for in­for­ma­tion." He said: "They (the news­pa­pers) have come to­geth­er in a way, that is hap­pen­ing in a long time in this coun­try, that they are dead set against the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM and of the PNM it­self. "But we have con­fi­dence in the peo­ple of T&T and they could write what­ev­er they want. We are com­ing to you night af­ter night as you turn out to hear the gospel ac­cord­ing to the PNM."

Man­ning al­so lashed out against his po­lit­i­cal ri­val, UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, crit­i­cis­ing the UNC's cam­paign which stat­ed: "We will rise." "It sounds to me like an ad­ver­tise­ment for vi­a­gra. That is them but on a PNM plat­form you get the facts," Man­ning said, prompt­ing peals of laugh­ter. Mak­ing ref­er­ence to UNC's po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Man­ning al­so ac­cused her of "fight­ing" her pre­de­ces­sor Bas­deo Pan­day "all the time." "There is so much she has to learn about the con­duct of the coun­try's busi­ness. A Prime Min­is­ter is not made overnight," he said. Cast­ing his mind in­to the his­to­ry of the PNM, he sin­gled out him­self,�Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the late Mor­ris Mar­shall as be­ing in­stru­men­tal in shap­ing the par­ty and cat­a­pult­ing it in­to suc­cess.

Part of that strug­gle, ac­cord­ing to Man­ning, was coax­ing the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty to join the PNM, when there was a�per­cep­tion the PNM was a par­ty made up of pre­dom­i­nant­ly Africans. He said: "We worked very hard and it was not an easy road. I was in­ter­fac­ing with the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty that I used to be eat­ing roti five times a day so much so that I am an ex­pert on roti," Man­ning said. In re­sponse to calls from the labour front to in­crease the min­i­mum wage to $20 an hour, Man­ning said that would on­ly re­sult in mak­ing T&T "un­com­pet­i­tive." "Ask them what is their vi­sion. Ask them who is go­ing to be At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. If it is not (Her­bert) Vol­ney then it is (COP's) Prakash Ra­mad­har. I don't know which one worse," Man­ning said.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, pock­ets of the crowd shout­ed "Man­ning go­ing back," to which the Prime Min­is­ter smiled and re­spond­ed: "Right back to Par­lia­ment." Say­ing the Gov­ern­ment was keep­ing its promis­es to de­liv­er bet­ter goods and ser­vices to T&T, Man­ning said the con­struc­tion of six ma­jor high­way sys­tems was ex­pect­ed to be­gin at the end of the year. Man­ning al­so de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment's hir­ing of Chi­nese labour, say­ing there was short­age of do­mes­tic labour. He said: "We ran short of do­mes­tic labour be­cause every­one was em­ployed. You can't get some­one to work at a do­mes­tic job in T&T be­cause they are not do­ing it. They are leav­ing it for the for­eign­ers."