Kali­fa Clyne

Green, brown and red-band maxi-taxis lined both sides of the Uri­ah But­ler High­way as thou­sands of sup­port­ers flocked to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's (PP) one year an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions. Armed with flags, they formed a sea of bright yel­low on Tues­day night at the Mid Cen­tre Mall car park, Ch­agua­nas.

On stage laud­ing the PP's achieve­ments were PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee's (NJAC) Makan­dal Daa­ga, Con­gress of the Peo­ple's Win­ston Dook­er­an and UNC chair­man Jack Warn­er. Cheers and ap­plause reigned and when Warn­er spoke, the crowd erupt­ed in­to flag-wav­ing glee.

Warn­er spoke of his min­istry's record and like oth­ers, in­ject­ed a few jokes at the ex­pense of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ples' Na­tion­al Move­ment. Tents were al­lo­cat­ed to ven­dors who sold pholourie, geera pork, fried chick­en and al­co­hol. While the PM spoke, sev­er­al men were seen gam­bling near the ven­dors' area. Oth­ers gath­ered around a tas­sa band po­si­tioned op­po­site Cen­tre Pointe Mall to en­joy the rhythms.

The par­ty-like at­mos­phere in­clud­ed a strong po­lice pres­ence and of­fi­cers were busy keep­ing peo­ple out of se­cured ar­eas. Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­tered the venue to He­len Red­dy's "I am Woman" and took the podi­um with Ce­line Dion's Alive in the back­ground. Sup­port­ers waved un­til the fi­nal note, as streams of yel­low and white con­fet­ti float­ed above. The cel­e­bra­tion end­ed with fire­works just be­fore 11 pm.