For­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day says women from the High­way Re-route Move­ment were not break­ing the law when they blocked Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing an In­di­an Ar­rival cel­e­bra­tion at Debe on Wednes­day. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Pan­day said the women had a le­git­i­mate right to protest. But he de­scribed as "re­gret­table" the Prime Min­is­ter's re­fusal to ac­knowl­edge the pro­test­ers or meet with them. He added: "It's a pity they had to re­sort to protest in that man­ner. It was done mere­ly as a re­quest to see the Prime Min­is­ter. "I would have thought that would have been sim­pler to see peo­ple and arrange to have a meet­ing with them. I thought that would have been the more sen­si­ble thing to do." He said he did not be­lieve the po­lice used more force than was nec­es­sary to re­move the pro­test­ers. "The po­lice had their job to do and they must do it. It is not the po­lice's fault."

How­ev­er, he main­tained: "Peo­ple have a right to protest and to have their voic­es heard." He al­so felt the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would face a neg­a­tive po­lit­i­cal back­lash be­cause of the in­ci­dent. He said: "What they did was to hu­mil­i­ate those women. It is hu­mil­i­at­ing to be re­moved by the po­lice. It was tan­ta­mount to an in­sult." He pre­dict­ed that mount­ing dis­con­tent­ment with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship would in­crease over the next few months. "The frus­tra­tion adds up bit by bit and the peo­ple will get more and more fed up. Then they will ex­plode." He said as long as Gov­ern­ment blocked le­git­i­mate av­enues for com­plaints, the peo­ple would en­gage in pub­lic protests.