Akash Sama­roo

When Guardian Me­dia ar­rived out­side the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, it seemed as if the chant­i­ng pro­test­ers were not singing from the same lyric sheet.

At first it sound­ed like, “No to Kan­ga­loo! No to Kan­ga­loo!” But af­ter a few sec­onds, you wouldn’t be blamed for think­ing that many were al­so chant­i­ng, “No to kan­ga­roo! No to kan­ga­roo!”

And a man parad­ing a kan­ga­roo mask on a stick con­firmed sus­pi­cions. That man was Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress coun­cil­lor for Av­o­cat/San Fran­cique North Dood­nath Mayrhoo.

How­ev­er, Mayrhoo said in spite of his prop, no one could claim he was be­ing dis­re­spect­ful to the now Pres­i­dent- elect.

“I not say­ing Chris­tine Kan­ga­roo, I just said kan­ga­roo, that is in no ref­er­ence to Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo. This is the Car­ni­val sea­son and I brought a lit­tle hu­mour to the protest,” Mayrhoo said.

But Mayrhoo al­so echoed the sen­ti­ments of his po­lit­i­cal par­ty, say­ing the protest was to let the Gov­ern­ment know they were not ac­cept­ing Kan­ga­loo as their Pres­i­dent.

“Nev­er be­fore in the his­to­ry of this coun­try has a Pres­i­dent come from the bow­els of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and we are con­cerned if she will be fair to the pop­u­la­tion.”

But while the coun­cil­lor, who was one of many UNC lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives in at­ten­dance, said the kan­ga­roo’s head was mere­ly a joke, for oth­er pro­test­ers, their pres­ence in the sun and rain in Port-of-Spain was no laugh­ing mat­ter.

Melvin Ho­sein told Guardian Me­dia he came out on his birth­day to protest, even if the re­sult in­side the Red House was a fore­gone con­clu­sion.

“I come out for a good cause.This is wicked that Gov­ern­ment do­ing peo­ple what they want. I rather put aside every­thing to have a good coun­try. Since 2015 we sour, but we still try­ing, re­gard­less of what they do to­day, we want them to know it wrong what they do­ing,” said the 60-year-old from Ch­agua­nas.

But one per­son who said she could not join the dozens of UNC sup­port­ers on the pave­ment along Aber­crom­by Street was ac­tivist Mar­sha Walk­er.

Walk­er is a fa­mil­iar face when­ev­er there are protests out­side the Par­lia­ment. Stand­ing in Wood­ford Square, Walk­er said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) told her that was as far as she could go.

“Lo and be­hold I show up and every­body out­side but I alone have to re­main in­side (Wood­ford Square), maybe it’s be­cause I went up against Row­ley, he scared,” Walk­er said.

Speak­ing of the Prime Min­is­ter, he ar­rived to tu­mul­tuous and pre­dictable “boos” from the crowd with their tra­di­tion­al, “Row­ley must go!” chant.

Un­phased, the Prime Min­is­ter, in the con­fines of the Red House com­pound, spun to face them and re­turned their “boos” with a friend­ly wave of his hand.

This was, of course, in di­rect con­trast to the ar­rival of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who was mobbed by her en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers, with some hold­ing her hand aloft with a com­bi­na­tion of, “Row­ley must go!” and, “We want Kam­la!”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader, how­ev­er, could not spend much time with them, as she ar­rived at 1.29 pm for the 1.30 pm sit­ting of the Elec­toral Col­lege.

Min­utes af­ter her de­par­ture, the en­tire crowd dis­persed and made their way to the await­ing maxi taxis, where one sup­port­er loud­ly of­fered Guardian Me­dia a meal of cur­ry duck.

We po­lite­ly de­clined.