De­spite a po­lice pres­ence on the pe­riph­ery of Pres­i­dent’s House, St Ann’s, the of­fi­cers could not con­trol the crowd of sup­port­ers that mobbed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she at­tempt­ed to leave the com­pound fol­low­ing her swear­ing-in yes­ter­day.

While the usu­al pro­to­col of Pres­i­dent’s House was be­ing main­tained on the com­pound, across the way on the edge of Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, the sound of tas­sa drums, horns and chants of “Kam­la! Kam­la!” jux­ta­posed the emo­tions of the oc­ca­sion.

The peo­ple, a mix­ture of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) sup­port­ers, had kept them­selves in or­der for most of the af­ter­noon.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of the for­mal­i­ties, elect­ed mem­bers of par­lia­ment leav­ing the com­pound by twos and threes sent the crowd in­to ec­sta­sy.

It be­gan with PEP leader Phillip Alexan­der pulling his ve­hi­cle over and run­ning to the crowd, re­sult­ing in PEP sup­port­ers bar­ing a ban­ner say­ing “We’ll fix it” spilling over in­to the road­way around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. This forced the po­lice to halt on­com­ing traf­fic.

“Get out of the road! Get out of the road!” the of­fi­cers shout­ed.

For a while peo­ple com­plied.

How­ev­er, when the UNC sup­port­ers spot­ted MPs Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Sad­dam Ho­sein and Bar­ry Padarath, the frag­ile sense of or­der was com­plete­ly bro­ken.

One of­fi­cer at­tempt­ed to push peo­ple back on­to the safe­ty of the pave­ment but they soon pushed past him and ran on­to the road­way to em­brace the men.

“Bar­ry! Bar­ry! Bar­ry!” they shout­ed for Padarath.

A woman broke away from the clutch­es of a man and grabbed Ho­sein for a “self­ie.”

Again, the po­lice tried to main­tain or­der as ve­hi­cles came to a stand­still, wait­ing on the spec­ta­cle to end.

But it crescen­doed when Per­sad-Bisses­sar came out to meet them. Al­though her ve­hi­cle was wait­ing near­by, Per­sad-Bisses­sar mo­men­tar­i­ly walked through the crowd as they chant­ed, “The peo­ple want Kam­la! The peo­ple want Kam­la!”

Even­tu­al­ly, she got in­to her ve­hi­cle and with a po­lice es­cort, left the area. It was on­ly then the crowd be­gan to dis­perse.