Gail Alexan­der

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day has thanked es­tranged MP Jack Warn­er for mak­ing it pos­si­ble for Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to claim on Mon­day night that "Ch­agua­nas is now PNM." Man­ning and sev­er­al PNM speak­ers had un­der­lined the claim–that "Ch­agua­nas is PNM" and that the area "is now PNM coun­try" at PNM's Mon­day night meet­ing at Cen­tre-Pointe Mall.

The boast be­gan with the meet­ing's chair­man Joel Primus and con­tin­ued through oth­er speak­ers cli­max­ing with Man­ning who pro­claimed it with some glee as he sur­veyed the au­di­ence at the PNM meet­ing held in cen­tral Trinidad, tra­di­tion­al­ly an Op­po­si­tion strong­hold.

Asked on Tues­day how he felt about the PNM's boast, Pan­day said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly: "Well, first of all I want to say thanks to Jack Warn­er be­cause he's try­ing his best to hand Ch­agua­nas over to the PNM." Pan­day is ex­pect­ed to meet con­stituents of Ch­agua­nas West to­day. On Man­ning's dis­missal of the UNC's claim of "eth­nic cleans­ing" in hos­pi­tals, Pan­day claimed, "I don't ex­pect him to ad­mit racism ex­ists, but every­one knows racism ex­ists in the al­lo­ca­tion of hous­ing and state re­sources. Call it what you want, it does ex­ist in the pub­lic sec­tor, it must be fought by every­one of us and ad­mit­ting that it ex­ists is the first step to­ward do­ing this."

Pan­day con­firmed that the UNC did not hold its usu­al Mon­day night pub­lic meet­ing this week due to the cur­rent Par­lia­men­tary break and since sev­er­al MPs in­clud­ing MP Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar were over­seas. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was due to re­turn from a le­gal case in St Kitts yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, Pan­day said the UNC had adopt­ed a new for­mat for main­tain­ing con­tact with the pub­lic dur­ing the break, rather than Mon­day night meet­ings. He said the UNC on Mon­day start­ed a se­ries of Mon­day night ra­dio broad­casts.

Guests speak­ers on Mon­day night's broad­cast were MPs Tim Gopeesingh and Sub­has Pan­day, who spoke about UNC's "eth­nic cleans­ing" claims and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. Pan­day dis­missed Man­ning's claim (at PNM's meet­ing on Mon­day night) that UNC on­ly had enough sup­port­ers now to fill two maxi-taxis to at­tend their pub­lic meet­ings. Pan­day dis­agreed with the per­cep­tion that the UNC's sup­port had shrunk. Pan­day said, "We'll de­ter­mine our agen­da and strate­gies and the PNM will de­ter­mine theirs. I'm sure they'll be hap­py if we for­mu­late the wrong one."

Pan­day is al­so main­tain­ing con­tact with "ground sup­port" via a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing which start­ed on Tues­day with youths in San Juan/ Barataria. Pan­day said he planned to go to var­i­ous seats over the break.

He will al­so be­gin meet­ing Ch­agua­nas West con­stituents from 10 am to­day at the of­fice of Ch­agua­nas deputy may­or Or­lan­do Nages­sar.