Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was ver­bal­ly at­tacked by a hand­ful of peo­ple wear­ing yel­low UNC T-shirts yes­ter­day dur­ing a walk­a­bout in cen­tral Trinidad yes­ter­day.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred close to the Pierre Road Recre­ation Ground short­ly be­fore dark dur­ing a two hour walk through Char­lieville, in sup­port of the PNM can­di­dates con­test­ing seats on the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

As Row­ley ap­proached, some res­i­dents greet­ed them, while oth­ers shout­ed at him: "We want roti, we want roti! We want we roti. Give we more roti!"

Al­though he tried to speak with them, they kept shout­ing at him. Row­ley was calm and shook the hands of oth­ers near­by who were more ac­com­mo­dat­ing.As he re­sumed his walk he wished all the pro­test­ers well.

There was a heavy po­lice pres­ence ac­com­pa­ny­ing the Prime Min­is­ter and the pro­test­ers were con­tained.

The ref­er­ence to roti was in re­sponse to Row­ley's re­cent state­ment about the pur­chase dur­ing the term of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of $350,000 worth in roti for guests at a Di­vali func­tion at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

How­ev­er, many res­i­dents of the area turned out to greet Row­ley took self­ies with him. He re­mind­ed them there was just one more week for the polls to open and he ap­pealed to them to sup­port his par­ty.

There was a small crowd of sup­port­ers wear­ing their PNM T-shirts, who ac­com­pa­nied the Prime Min­is­ter, in­clud­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon and the can­di­date for Char­lieville, Sabeer Ali.

Af­ter the walk, in a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Row­ley con­demned all forms of vi­o­lence. He said cit­i­zens are free to sup­port whichev­er par­ty they want­ed with­out re­sort­ing to such acts.

Last Fri­day a PNM sup­port­er was shot while dri­ving in a mu­sic truck in Ch­agua­nas. He was treat­ed at the Ch­agua­nas Health fa­cil­i­ty and dis­charged. PNM cam­paign man­ag­er, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan and his UNC coun­ter­part, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, have made state­ments con­demn­ing vi­o­lence in the cam­paign for the No­vem­ber 28 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

Row­ley said the in­ci­dents of cam­paign vi­o­lence"is some­thing we con­demn (as) every cit­i­zen is free to choose which side they want to go (vote) and every cit­i­zen has the pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion to sup­port or not to sup­port."

He said the PNM does not hold it against any cit­i­zen "who may not want to sup­port us on any oc­ca­sion but on every oc­ca­sion we seek to jus­ti­fy and ask per­sons to sup­port us."

He said if some cit­i­zens are not in sup­port of the PNM "then all we ask is that they re­spect the process and re­spect the coun­try's her­itage."

Row­ley said: "We have al­ways had free and fair elec­tions in this coun­try, with­out vi­o­lence, and vi­o­lence has no place in our elec­tions process. So whether it is vi­o­lence by word (or) vi­o­lence by deed, we con­demn it and we hope that it doesn't hap­pen again."

The Prime Min­is­ter added that the pop­u­la­tion will choose who they want to run lo­cal gov­ern­ment and "we ac­cept the ma­jor­i­ty and the mi­nor­i­ty po­si­tion is re­spect­ed and we go on to the next elec­tion."

Row­ley said he was very sur­prised by the most­ly cor­dial re­cep­tion he re­ceived in the area be­cause "it is not a dis­trict that we have been able to do these kinds of thing in be­fore be­cause some peo­ple be­lieve that some ar­eas are be­yond our reach."

He said the PNM is "reach­ing out to all com­mu­ni­ties , all cit­i­zens and hold­ing out to them good gov­er­nance and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate against the PNM's fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples."