Melis­sa Doughty

Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh told mem­bers of the High­way Re-route Move­ment yes­ter­day he was un­cer­tain whether he would re­turn to protest out­side the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice on Mon­day. That, he said, de­pend­ed on whether PM Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­knowl­edged the pro­pos­al by the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion be­tween the move­ment and Gov­ern­ment.

Speak­ing to me­dia at the end of day 16 of his hunger strike, Kublals­ingh said: "I un­der­stand the PM is mak­ing a state­ment...which I be­lieve she is mak­ing in Par­lia­ment to­day. I will need to study it. If I need help in in­ter­pret­ing it, my­self and the re-route move­ment, we will bring our oth­er lead­ers and col­leagues in in­ter­pret­ing it and we will is­sue a state­ment to the me­dia and the na­tion over the week­end or on Mon­day.

"But we can­not say if we will be here on Mon­day. We will on­ly be here on Mon­day if we find that the state­ment does not ac­cord with what we asked her for. We in­tend to en­sure she ac­cords with her promise and if she does not, then we are back here on Mon­day," he said. But up to late yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had not spo­ken on the mat­ter or is­sued a state­ment on it.

On Wednes­day af­ter­noon, the JCC, along with T&T Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI), Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGOs (Fi­tun) and Work­ing Women for So­cial Progress de­liv­ered a pro­pos­al to the PM sug­gest­ing a so­lu­tion to the im­passe be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and the pro­test­ers over the Mon De­sir to Debe leg of the Point Fortin to San Fer­nan­do High­way.

They gave the PM 48 hours to re­spond. At the end of the hunger strike at 4 pm yes­ter­day, Kublals­ingh ac­knowl­edged that the group had heard noth­ing from the PM. Kublals­ingh spoke of his ail­ing health as a con­se­quence of the hunger strike, say­ing de­spite the doc­tors' prog­no­sis he felt very strong spir­i­tu­al­ly. Kublals­ingh said he would be spend­ing his week­end in south be­yond the Ca­roni Plains.

He said he would con­tin­ue not to eat or drink un­til he re­ceives an un­der­tak­ing from the PM that a com­pre­hen­sive re­port, in­clud­ing a hy­dro­log­i­cal re­port, cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis among oth­ers and as­sured the hunger-strike would end once this oc­curred. He ap­peared to re­main hope­ful that the PM would ad­dress the re­port de­liv­ered to her by the JCC.

When asked about his health Kublals­ingh said his vi­tal signs were sta­ble de­spite doc­tors' warn­ing of mul­ti­ple or­gan fail­ure. A large num­ber of peo­ple con­tin­ued to vis­it Kublals­ingh, among them rap­so group 3Canal, mas­man Pe­ter Min­shall, ac­tress­es Pen­ne­lope Spencer and Ce­cil­ia Salazar. Khafra Kam­bon, chair­man of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, al­so vis­it­ed and pledged his sup­port.

Roger Roberts of 3Canal, af­ter singing the group's new song The Peo­ple, in­spired by the re-route move­ment and Kublals­ingh, said: "This strikes fun­da­men­tal­ly at what our whole gov­er­nance is about. This strikes fun­da­men­tal­ly at who we are as a peo­ple and how we are go­ing to deal with re­solv­ing con­flict."