Richard?Lord

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James says the lat­est poll con­duct­ed by UWI/ANSA McAL clear­ly shows an in­creas­ing num­ber of peo­ple want­i­ng the Op­po­si­tion to form the next gov­ern­ment de­spite an in­crease in sup­port for in­cum­bent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­tain that post.James was com­ment­ing on the poll which was pub­lished in yes­ter­day's Sun­day Guardian. He said the poll shows the gen­er­al find­ings of pre­vi­ous sam­ples.

In the poll Per­sad-Bisses­sar emerged as the pre­ferred choice for Prime Min­is­ter gar­ner­ing 34 per cent of the votes, while Row­ley re­ceived 24 per cent. Some 25 per cent of the re­spon­dents were un­de­cid­ed.James not­ed, how­ev­er, the lat­est poll gave the PNM a big­ger lead, while it al­so showed more peo­ple favour Per­sad-Bisses­sar to lead the gov­ern­ment than Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

James said it was emerg­ing as a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test be­tween the lead­ers. He said, how­ev­er, "It is not the PM who wins elec­tions but po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the PNM will win."He said the poll showed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was en­joy­ing a lev­el of pop­u­lar­i­ty even though her "gov­ern­ment was rot­ten to the core. She is try­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate things, to turn the tide by the tough­ness of her de­ci­sions."

On­ly last week Per­sad-Bisses­sar sacked Anand Ram­lo­gan as at­tor­ney gen­er­al, Gary Grif­fith as na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter and Em­manuel George as jus­tice min­is­ter.Ram­lo­gan and Grif­fith were asked to re­sign over an al­le­ga­tion of wit­ness tam­per­ing against Ram­lo­gan by Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty di­rec­tor, David West.

James said while Per­sad-Bisses­sar was seen by the pop­u­la­tion as not be­ing re­spon­si­ble for those de­vel­op­ments, the for­mer min­is­ters were ap­point­ed by her. "It was her judg­ment in most cas­es," he added.He said the poll showed she was a leader who was "sur­round­ed by mis­cre­ants."He in­sist­ed "in the end the PNM will ben­e­fit."And for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day said a poll was sim­ply a poll of what peo­ple were think­ing at a par­tic­u­lar time.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Pan­day said the PP Gov­ern­ment had short-changed the pop­u­la­tion as it did not de­liv­er val­ue for mon­ey. He said Peo­ples Part­ner­ship made many promis­es but failed to de­liv­er. He said it spent some $200 bil­lion and there was "no val­ue for mon­ey."Pan­day ad­mit­ted the Gov­ern­ment did fix some drains but a tremen­dous cost to the trea­sury. He said it al­so stared some in­fra­struc­ture projects.

Pan­day said he wel­come a probe in­to al­leged wit­ness tam­per­ing in­volv­ing for­mer Ram­lo­gan. He said the probe must me a mean­ing­ful one and there should be no cov­er up.He said if there was a cov­er up the en­tire ex­er­cise would be mean­ing­less.